


my head's underwater (but I'm breathing fine)

by inkin_brushes



Series: Immortals (Vamp AU) [1]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6273949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hakyeon was the best vampire hunter for fifty square miles, but a hunt gone awry and a taciturn vampire named Taekwoon change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this gif](http://24.media.tumblr.com/4bccc3878e560d1fb443375f8701ffe0/tumblr_mxikmyel681ql64hmo1_500.gif) and was like, N looks like sexy vampire bait. And that's it. Then we had another AU. Just what we needed. ALL I WANTED WAS TO WRITE VAMP HUNTER!N FUCKING VAMPIRE!LEO AND THEN THIS IS WHAT I GET.

Hakyeon was playing the bait tonight.

Hakyeon was always the bait nowadays. He and Hongbin used to trade off, but that had changed after Hongbin— well. And Wonshik couldn’t do it, wasn’t an appealing enough target, and Sanghyuk wasn’t ready yet. So, Hakyeon it was.

He stumbled out of the club, making a show of having to lean against the wall for support. The music was blaring even outside of the club, one of the many such small, cramped establishments on this side of the city. It wasn’t really legal for any business to be open this long after the sun had gone down, but Hakyeon had learned long ago to not underestimate the will of young people and their desire to get drunk, high, and party, even if all sense dictated elsewise. Besides, raids rarely happened in the dodgier parts of the city, the sucker cops having given up, and this close to the east end, the neighborhood was decidedly dodgy. There were several clubs open along this block, sitting between dilapidated or outright crumbling buildings, their neon signs flickering. 

Despite the rundown environment, there were still strong streetlamps placed all along the sidewalk, and no one was straying out of the light they cast. There were deep shadows everywhere else, and Hakyeon thought it was amusing how all these people were willing to tempt fate enough to leave their homes in the dead of night, but wouldn’t quite dare to step beyond the little pools of artificial yellow light, wouldn’t pull away from the crowd, always walking together in groups of at least two. As if that would save them from a truly determined vampire. The moment you left your home after dark, you had painted a target on yourself, and any measures you took to protect yourself after that were only deterrents. Nothing could keep you safe. 

Hakyeon cast around, eyes falling on Wonshik and Sanghyuk standing under a streetlamp across the street. They were dressed casually, and gave no indication that they had seen him, but Hakyeon knew better. He really didn’t need backup, but after what had happened to Hongbin, Wonshik was pretty insistent, and Sanghyuk could do with the demonstration. 

Hakyeon slid along the wall of the club, the brick crumbling a little, getting dust on his black clothing. He couldn’t wear anything too revealing, had to cover up his tattoos, so he was in a long sleeved shirt with a pretty decent collar, but it was tight, and so were his jeans, and enough of his neck was left exposed to be appealing. He tripped along the sidewalk, staying out of the light of the lamps but near enough to make it look like he was trying, at least. It wouldn’t do to look too easy. 

They’d been trawling this area for three days, going to different clubs each night. It was boring, mindless, passive hunting, but after four days of investigating the usual way and coming up with nothing but dead end leads and an increasingly larger number of dry corpses, they’d resorted to fishing. The sucker cops were good for keeping vampires in line, making people feel safe, but they weren’t actually very good at finding them and stopping them. That fell on the shoulders of people like Hakyeon, whose methods and means weren’t very legal or safe. 

They knew they were dealing with a lone, wandering vampire, the kind that blew into towns, ate a lot of people, and then hopped to the next city before they could be caught. Lather, rinse, repeat. If it was a travelling nest, there’d be more dry corpses, and so far there’d only been a maximum of one a night. Vampires weren’t big on sharing a meal. And the local nests and lone vamps weren’t stupid enough to leave the empty husks of their victims lying around. They disposed of them in whatever mysterious manner vamps did, landing their victims on the ever growing list of missing persons, but not for sure on the list of people attacked by vampires, and thereby not drawing attention to themselves nor their chosen hunting grounds. The local vamps weren’t this dumb, they’d be easier to stop if they were. But this one was stupid, cocky, and chances are it wouldn’t see Hakyeon coming. It wasn’t like any of the local vamps, territorial as they were, would warn an intruding vamp about the local hunting squad. 

Hakyeon’s tattoos were itching, prickling under his skin, and he rubbed at the one on his forearm absently. They seemed to be even more lively tonight, which Hakyeon hoped meant his quarry was nearby, though his tats were _always_ restless this close to the east end of the city. There was a nest somewhere out here. 

The wall Hakyeon was leaning on abruptly ended, and a dark alley yawned before him. Hakyeon pushed himself off from the wall and let himself stagger into it. His tattoos pinged more at that, not appreciating it, but the one on the center of his chest grew warm, his ever open owl eyes, and Hakyeon’s eyes adjusted to the darkness in a way that wasn’t humanly possible. 

He’d ordered a few shots while in the club, genuinely downing one, while the second had deliberately ended up more on his person than in his mouth. Hakyeon hoped the acrid scent of the alcohol would cover up the lack of fear he felt, and would mute the smell of the magic hovering around him.

His tattoos, and the wards embedded in them, were handy. Through the years he’d gotten dozens of them. Most people opted for charmed jewelry or the like, but those weren’t very powerful, and they wore out fast, getting their juice from the sorcerer who had cast the ward and the spell itself. Wards drawn into the skin were the best, but they were a bitch to cast, and getting and giving them was rather illegal. They were too unpredictable, and they tended to drain the owner. Hakyeon had never felt burdened by them; his grandfather had been a magic user so maybe he had enough of that blood to make a difference in the weight of wards he could bear. Aside from the general nuisance of them (he went through a phone almost once a month because smaller electrical things tended to short circuit around him) and how fucking annoying they could be (they were pretty muted when he was at home but the minute he stepped outside they’d begin to chatter), Hakyeon thought they were worth it.

The biggest issue was that the sheer volume he had meant he positively dripped magic, which gave him away as being _something_ , something vampires would probably rather not mess with. And that was a problem on nights like this, when he needed one to get close enough to off them.

It didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem on this night though. His tattoos rippled with a shock of energy, and Hakyeon knew he wasn’t alone anymore. 

He hunkered down, like he was sick, and waited. There wasn’t any sound aside from the distant thumping of music from the club. Vamps were, as a rule, pretty silent movers. They were also faster and stronger than humans, but not as much as the general populace seemed to think. Vamps liked to keep people thinking they were more than they really were, though, and the sucker cops weren’t exactly going to tell people that vampires weren’t quite as heinously dangerous as they all thought they were, only somewhat heinously dangerous. They wanted to keep people afraid. 

Hakyeon sensed more than heard it behind him. His wards were uncomfortably hot now, the flaming sun on his back almost burning. 

The vampire grabbed him, which was its first mistake. Several of Hakyeon’s wards went off at once, like little bombs. There was no sound, no light, no fire, but Hakyeon felt the energy sizzle out of them and through him like an electrical current. The vampire’s hands weren’t touching him anymore.

Hakyeon whirled just in time to see the vampire stumble back, falling down on his — his, male vampire, Hakyeon noted — knees. Vamps were rarely ever clumsy, one of their main giveaways was always the oily, unnatural way they moved. But Hakyeon’s wards were strong, having a similar effect on vampires that tasers had on humans. 

Hakyeon had to fight down his fight or flight response, even after all these years hunting. Centuries of evolution had given humans very strong instincts where vampires were concerned, and most of that instinct said to run screaming. There was something horrific about vampires. They were virtually the same as humans in physical appearance, but there was just something so off about them, so predatory, it still made Hakyeon shiver when he came face to face with one. 

Hakyeon got hold of himself through sheer force of will and years of practice. He smoothly drew his silver dagger from its sheath at his ankle, knowing the shock from his wards wouldn’t last long. Some people, namely Wonshik, prefered stakes, but Hakyeon found them too unwieldy. 

The vamp couldn’t yet get up but it was trying to glamour him, Hakyeon realized, judging by the way the small triangular tat between his clavicles was pulsing. Second mistake.

Hakyeon shifted his grip on his dagger and slammed the blade into the vampire’s chest, through the gaps of his ribs and into his heart. 

The recoil was always shit, the backlash of magic released from a vampire dying. Hakyeon ripped his blade from the body and didn’t have to feign stumbling back, gagging a little. Then it was over. He stuffed the blade back into its sheath and got the fuck out of the alleyway and back onto the lighted pavement. 

Wonshik and Sanghyuk were waiting. “You alright?” Wonshik asked.

Hakyeon nodded. “Yeah,” he panted, “yeah. Just a bit drained from the wards going off.”

“It went for you then?” Sanghyuk asked, his eager tone belying his newness. He’d joined five months ago, and the excitement still hadn’t worn off.

“Of course,” Hakyeon replied. “Grabbed me and then tried to glamour me.”

“Stupid,” Wonshik mumbled, “I wish they were all this dumb.” He’d pulled out his phone. “I’m gonna call the others, tell them we got it.”

Hakyeon nodded again. He wished they were all this easy as well. If it had gotten up and tried to attack him, he would have been in a bit more trouble. His wards would be able to let off a second blast but without time to recharge it wouldn’t have been as strong. But resisting a glamour was fairly less taxing. 

Vamps had a sort of natural pull to them, this strange urge that called you to look them in the eyes and let yourself be drawn in. Everyone, down to toddlers still in their cribs, knew not to look vamps in the eyes, but just because you knew didn’t mean you’d be able to stop yourself. And if you did you were pretty royally screwed, because while it was still possible to resist a full on glamour, it wasn’t something that happened often, or for very long. 

Humans had a few natural defenses of their own against vamps, some strange, old engrained magic in their bodies, the main one being that a vampire couldn’t feed on a person unless they had permission. Hakyeon thought it was a rather stupid and futile defense, like trying to shield yourself from a downpour of rain with a newspaper. Vamps could still kill you, could rip your head from your shoulders, they just couldn’t drink the blood. And it didn’t even have to be willfully given consent. It could be glamoured out, hence why looking into a vampire’s eyes was considered certain doom. Pointless. 

Wonshik came back, stuffing his phone in his pocket. He grinned. “You wanna get a drink, to celebrate?” 

“No, I want to go home and clean up and read and then sleep,” Hakyeon grumbled, feeling the blood drying sticky on his hands. Wonshik laughed.

They began to walk, sticking to the lights the lamps cast like everyone else. “Ah,” Wonshik said, slinging an arm over Hakyeon’s shoulders, “but you still have to fill out the case file forms.”

Hakyeon groaned. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he replied, then side-eyed Wonshik. “Or you could do it for me.”

Wonshik sighed, like he was terribly put upon. “I suppose I could. I’m heading back to HQ anyway, to visit— yeah.” He didn’t finish his sentence, didn’t need to.

Hakyeon looked away from Wonshik’s eyes at that, and he ducked out from under Wonshik’s arm. “Make sure the brat gets back alright, yeah?” he said, nodding at Sanghyuk.

Sanghyuk gave an indignant squawk, but Wonshik agreed easily, and at the next corner they parted ways. Their headquarters were nearer the south side of the city, but still not in the best neighborhood. They rested inside a rundown building that didn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it was renovated and rather high tech. Hakyeon couldn’t say the same for his own apartment, which rested more towards downtown, and was pretty much as dilapidated on the inside as it looked on the outside. But it was safe and it was home.

Human defense number two was that a vamp couldn’t enter a human’s residence unless they were invited. Again, that could be gotten around if the vamp managed to glamour you into inviting them in or if they drew you out of the house somehow, but it was actually the best defense humans had. Stay home after dark and you were at very low risk of a sucker attack.

Hakyeon walked through the streets briskly; as he got towards the center of the city there were less people milling around, the slightly better neighborhood meaning people stayed fucking indoors at night like they should. Hakyeon didn’t mind being alone on the streets, he could handle himself as a general rule, and vamps rarely went hunting in the quieter areas, but it still put him on alert in an unpleasant way. 

There was a woman on the other side of the street, going the opposite direction as Hakyeon, and like him she was sticking to the lamplight, walking quickly while furtively glancing around. Hakyeon might not have given her a second glance but for the way his wards began to hum. 

She passed him, and he didn’t stop walking, but he slowed as much as he dared, and tried to _see_. He would have missed it if it weren’t for his tattoos, but he was able to catch movement, unnatural, smoky movement. She had a vamp on her tail, and it was doing that _thing_ vamps did, where they flitted through the shadows like apparitions, solid but somehow not quite as tangible as they ought to be. 

“Fucking suckers,” Hakyeon hissed under his breath, and then he bolted across the street, as silent as he could be on his human feet. He pulled his dagger back out while he was going, the blade still crusted with blood. 

Once on the other side of the street, Hakyeon wasn’t sure what he should do. The woman had turned around the corner, and with her the vamp. If it was out when the moon was this full, then it was young and Hakyeon could surely take it on his own. The problem was if it saw him coming it would probably bolt, and that would do no one any good. Hakyeon didn’t like it when they saw his face and lived. He ran down the street in the end, deciding he didn’t have time to call for backup and wait, it was in stalking mode, and it wouldn’t be long until it attacked. 

Hakyeon turned the corner and heard a small, alarmed cry, abruptly cut off. The woman was still in the lamplight but she had stopped walking, her face slack and eyes glazed over as she stared up into the face of the vamp that had been tailing her. It was unabashedly standing beside her under the light, murmuring something too softly for Hakyeon to hear. It was striking, how alike in form they were and yet somehow it was so starkly obvious under the harsh lighting that it was most definitely not human. 

Hakyeon didn’t pause, leaping forward and closing the distance between them. The vamp’s back was to him, but Hakyeon didn’t really believe he’d be able to sneak up on it. Nevertheless, he brought his dagger up in an arc, aiming to slide it through the vamp’s ribs just to the side of its shoulder blade; even if he missed the heart, silver still hurt like a bitch for vamps.

But the blade didn’t make it that far. Hakyeon hadn’t truly expected it to be that easy. The vamp whirled, grabbing Hakyeon’s wrist and stopping the dagger before it could do damage. Hakyeon’s wards immediately flared up and burst at the contact, and— nothing, nothing more than a slight wince that flickered across the vamp’s features. Hakyeon blinked up in shock but the vamp had grabbed Hakyeon’s upper arm with its other hand and then the world was tipping as he was flipped over and slammed into the unforgiving concrete. His arm had been yanked right out of its socket, and Hakyeon might have screamed but he couldn’t breath, all the wind knocked out of him. He was gasping like a fish out of water. 

The vamp was on him before he could move, kneeling over his chest, one knee pressing into Hakyeon’s torso. It wrapped a pale hand around Hakyeon’s throat, pinning him down. Its skin was cold, icy, and wrong somehow, so wrong. Hakyeon’s own hands came up to grasp at the vamp’s wrist, nails biting into the skin in an attempt to pry it off. He might as well have been trying to move a marble statue. The edges of Hakyeon’s vision had gone blurry and dark, like his terror was something physical closing in around him.

Hakyeon’s wards were frantic, sending out waves of energy in pulses, and it was exhausting him, so he cut them off as best he could. He couldn’t turn them off entirely, but he could stop them draining him. They settled back into a mild sort of panic, pinging against him in an insistent fashion, screaming _VAMPIRE_ , as if he didn’t already fucking know. The stupid useless things hadn’t _worked_ , and Hakyeon had no idea how that was possible. 

Hakyeon blinked around himself quickly. His dagger had gotten flung away when he’d been flipped, and the woman— she was gone. Hakyeon didn’t blame her. When she had come out of the glamour her own instincts had probably carried her off on the wind before she could even think. If Hakyeon was lucky she’d pause just long enough to call the sucker police, and if he was luckier still they’d get here before he was dead. But that was probably asking for too much.

Hakyeon was able to take a deep breath in, finally, and he looked up at the face of the vampire that was going to kill him.

Male vamp, had black hair that fell over his eyes a little, a small mouth, and full cheeks that didn’t really match the intensity of his gaze. He was taller than Hakyeon, broader, not that size really mattered much with vamps. Even the smallest vampire was still stronger than the bulkiest of humans. 

Hakyeon met his eyes. The vamp wasn’t trying to glamour him, but even if he had been, it didn’t matter. Hakyeon was dead either way, there was no getting out of this with his wards apparently ineffective and his weapon gone, not unless the cavalry arrived. A dull resigned sort of numbness settled down upon him, his body unable to hold onto the pitch of terror for very long.

“You should know better than that,” the vamp said, voice jarringly soft. His eyes were unblinking as he met Hakyeon’s stare. 

Hakyeon gave a full body shudder at the sound of the vamp’s voice, and somehow, his body’s reaction was making him mad, of all things. He was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. He’d thought he was over being so frightened of these creatures. “I have anti-glamour wards,” he heard himself say. His own voice sounded like it was coming from a distance away. 

“You wards don’t, _won’t_ , work on me,” the vamp replied. As if to prove the point, one of Hakyeon’s defense wards gave a hearty jolt, and the vampire didn’t even flinch. 

Hakyeon scowled, continuing to stare into the vamp’s eyes anyway, defiant and inexplicably angry. Angry at vampires for existing, angry at this particular vampire for finally being the one that brought him down, and angry at himself for making such a rookie error. He’d gotten cocky, and now he was pissed. He dug his nails into the vampire’s wrist, trying to claw blood out, and the vamp pressed down on his windpipe that bit harder, and the spike of terror in Hakyeon’s stomach made him subside. 

For endless seconds, minutes, they just stared at one another, and Hakyeon felt panic begin to bubble up his throat again, clawing through him until he felt likely to burst. He just wanted this to be over, but he wasn’t going to beg for his life, and neither was he going to ask this monster to just finish him off either. What was the damn thing even waiting for?

But the vampire didn’t snap his neck, and neither did he glamour Hakyeon into letting him feed. Instead he shifted his grip, moving his hand up to grasp Hakyeon’s jaw, forcing his head to the side and baring Hakyeon’s jugular. Hakyeon began to struggle, unable to stop himself, but he couldn’t get anywhere at all. 

The vamp leaned down, nosing along Hakyeon’s neck, and Hakyeon let out an involuntary cry, body jerking, his heart feeling like it was going to burst out of his chest. He couldn’t— Hakyeon hadn’t said he could—

Hakyeon dimly realized the vampire was chuckling, just a soft little noise, the air puffing against Hakyeon’s skin, and Hakyeon stopped squirming, going limp in despair. “Please,” he whispered, then bit down on his own tongue to stop himself saying any more.

The vampire rubbed his thumb down along Hakyeon’s jaw, in a motion Hakyeon would have thought to be soothing if not for the circumstances. He pulled back, staring down at Hakyeon with an impossible to read expression. Hakyeon stared back up at him tiredly, unable to look away from the vampire’s eyes. They were pretty, in an alien sort of way, almond shaped and a deep brown. 

The vampire stood smoothly, stepping away from him. Hakyeon blinked, like he was surfacing from a spell. The vamp turned his back and walked away. 

Hakyeon wanted to scream, wanted to demand to know what kind of game this monster was playing with him now, but he found he couldn’t move. For a very long time he lay on the sidewalk, his body feeling queerly numb. 

Somewhere an owl hooted, and the pain of Hakyeon’s dislocated shoulder slowly bled back to him, and the shaking started up again in earnest. Eventually he was able to roll onto his uninjured side and fish his phone out of his pocket. It was cracked, but still worked, though it took a frustratingly long time for Hakyeon to dial the number he wanted.

After two rings Wonshik’s voice floated through the speaker. “Hakyeon? What’s up? Did you forget—”

“Wonshik,” Hakyeon gasped, and something about his voice made Wonshik fall deathly silent. “I need— I need help. I got attacked— I need—”

“Where are you?” Wonshik said, his voice tightly urgent. Hakyeon could tell he was moving.

Hakyeon’s brain was running so slowly. “I— I don’t know.” He looked around as best he could. “I’m across the street from the Little Daisy Cafe, near downtown.” Hakyeon could only pray he wasn’t leading his friend into a trap.

“I’m on my way, alright? I’m in the car. Just— just stay put.” There was shuffling, and the sound of an engine starting. 

“I don’t think I can really move any way,” Hakyeon replied, voice catching on a sob. Cha Hakyeon, the best hunter this side of the equator, brought to tears by a single fucking vampire. He was too experienced for this, hadn’t cried since his first hunt, years ago.

“Are you injured?” Wonshik asked.

“A little,” Hakyeon said. He struggled to sit up, limbs feeling like jelly. He was able to scoot so he could press his back against the lamppost. His dagger was too far to grab just yet. 

What felt like ages later, Wonshik’s car sped around the corner like it had hellhounds chasing it, and came screeching to a stop right in front of Hakyeon. Wonshik leapt out and ran to his side. He reached out to touch him, but something about the way Hakyeon looked made him stutter to a halt before he could. “Hakyeon?” he asked tentatively, his head swiveling alertly, searching for threats. “Hakyeon— what—”

“It was an Elimia,” Hakyeon gasped, and Wonshik broke off, going pale. “We need to get out of here.”

Wonshik grabbed Hakyeon’s shirt roughly and pulled him to his feet, half dragging him to the car and shoving him into the passenger seat. It jostled Hakyeon’s shoulder, but he honestly didn’t care. Wonshik slid behind the steering wheel with the alarming swiftness of one truly terrified and then they were speeding away to the sound of screeching tires. 

——

Hakyeon sat on his couch, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, his hands cupping a mug of tea. It had too much honey in it, but hey, Wonshik had tried, and through the fog, Hakyeon appreciated the gesture. Wonshik was also the one who’d sat Hakyeon down at the couch and wrapped the blanket around him. After he’d put Hakyeon’s shoulder back into place, that is.

Hakyeon sipped at the tea slowly, hoping the warmth would stop his shaking. 

Wonshik, after pacing for several minutes, presumably trying to let Hakyeon get his bearings, came and perched in front of Hakyeon on the edge of his rickety coffee table. It gave an ominous creak under his weight but didn’t fall over. “You need to tell me what happened,” Wonshik said softly. 

Hakyeon looked at his face blankly, then down to his mug, which was letting off steam in gentle plumes. “I fucked up.”

Wonshik didn’t have anything to say to that, and he sat still, waiting for more.

Hakyeon took a deep breath. “While I was walking home I caught sight of a— a vamp stalking a woman.”

Wonshik sighed heavily, and Hakyeon saw him rubbing a hand over his face out of the corner of his eye. “Hakyeon.”

“I know, alright, _I know_ ,” Hakyeon snapped. “I just thought— it was one fucking vamp. The moon’s almost full, and it was alone, so I figured it was a young loner vamp, I’ve taken down dozens of those on my own. I took down one earlier tonight. I’ve been doing this for _years_.”

“You never know how a hunt’s gonna go,” Wonshik replied quietly. “You’ve told me that, over and over.”

“Yeah, well,” Hakyeon said sourly. “Like I said, I fucked up. I got cocky, and I didn’t pay enough attention.” He sipped his tea, trying to ignore the weight of Wonshik’s gaze. He could feel Wonshik wondering how he’d missed that the vamp was an Elimia, and in hindsight, Hakyeon didn’t know how he had. It had been simple, blatant arrogance on his part. The taste of it was acrid in his mouth. He hadn’t paused to weigh all the options, hadn’t truly thought a single vampire could take him down. One never had before.

His cup was empty, and he stared into it with a frown.

After a long silence Wonshik finally asked, “How did you get away?”

Hakyeon shook his head. “I didn’t. It let me go.” Wonshik blinked. “I don’t get it either. Maybe it’s just playing with me.” His fingers tightened around the mug at that thought, remembering the way the damn thing had laughed at him. 

“Or maybe you just got really lucky,” Wonshik said slowly. “Elimias tend to be nonviolent, or rather—” his smiled wryly, “as nonviolent as vamps can be.”

“Hunters are at the top of every vampire’s shit list though, like I am pretty sure we’re even above sucker cops. It doesn’t make sense. It had me, Wonshik, my wards didn’t do _anything_ and in my shock it disarmed me in a blink— and it had me on my back, its hand at my neck, and it just walked away.” Sudden anger swept through him. “It _laughed_ at me.”

“Maybe it thought you weren’t a threat,” Wonshik said in a small voice, recoiling and putting his hands up in a nonthreatening gesture when Hakyeon glared at him. “Hey, dude, I know. All the smart vamps tremble at the thought of you and all that, but you aren’t infallible, and there’ll always be shit in the dark that hunters need to be wary of, even you.”

Hakyeon looked down at his bare feet. “I just can’t believe any of this. What are the chances of me running into an Elimia? What are the chances of it letting me go after I attacked it? Urgh.” He shook his head. “Are there even any records of an Elimia living here?”

“No, we’d have heard about it, but then, vamps don’t really announce when they move into town, so.”

Hakyeon sighed, putting his mug on the table by Wonshik’s thigh and wincing when his shoulder twinged.

Wonshik caught it. “I guess I’ll go, you should probably rest. Unless you want me to stay?”

Hakyeon almost made a quip about how he wasn’t a five year old and didn’t need a babysitter, but then he caught the look on Wonshik’s face, and it died in his throat. “No, I’ll be okay,” he said instead. “Thank you, for— thank you.”

Wonshik nodded shortly and stood. Before he left he told Hakyeon to stay home the next night, that he’d be reporting this all to HQ and they’d mandate that he needed to rest anyway. Hakyeon felt no guilt calling Wonshik a mutated ghoulface over that, but he agreed that for one night, he’d rest. 

Once he was alone he stayed sitting. He thought about getting up to drink some water, or get ice for his shoulder, but in the end he just flopped over, bringing his legs up to rest on the couch.

The shaking had returned, but he was exhausted, and even with the pain and fear, Hakyeon drifted off fairly quickly, clutching the blanket around himself like it could protect him.

——

Hakyeon woke in the mid-afternoon, sunlight streaming obnoxiously bright through the cracks in his blinds. He groaned, attempting to sit up, and then promptly gave up on that as every part of his body screamed out a protest. He didn’t think anything had been broken, which was a small mercy, but he could tell he was very bruised.

After taking a few moments to get his bearings he slowly, carefully, rolled off the couch, taking his blanket with him. He scooted until he was beneath the nearest window and twisted the rod on the blinds, opening them. He then proceeded to blearily lay in the square of sunlight filtering in for another few hours, watching the dust float through the air.

The sun was a comfort, warm and constant and safe. The daylight hours were the only time any of them were truly safe, and lying in the warm light, Hakyeon felt peaceful. His wards hummed happily.

Eventually his patch of light moved, beginning to turn pinkish as the sun travelled towards the horizon, so Hakyeon was forced to get up. He felt stiff, and dirtied, somehow, so he decided a bath was in order. When he went to run it, his own reflection spooked him a little. He looked pale, drawn, most unlike himself. The deep smudges around his eyes from the eyeliner didn’t help. There were tear tracks too, smearing black down his face. Hakyeon wiped at them but they’d dried, gross and crusty on his face. 

“Urgh,” he grumbled, rubbing harder. Eventually he gave up and started running the water.

While he waited for the tub to fill, he checked his phone, where a few texts from Wonshik waited, asking how he was. And after that he made the rounds on his flat, checking the wards and charms for gaps. Residences were naturally vampire proof, but Hakyeon was a hunter, and it never hurt to be too careful. 

When he was satisfied there were no drafts anywhere, he went back to the bathroom. He knelt, taking his dagger’s holster off his ankle. It was empty. Hakyeon hadn’t grabbed the blade last night, and had forgotten to tell Wonshik to do so, in too much of a hurry to flee. The chances of it still being in the street where he’d left it were virtually nil. He placed the empty leather on the sink with a sigh and shed his ripped clothes, peeling off the tight layers to check himself for damage. 

There were bruises, of course. His shoulder was a mottled purple, somewhat swollen, the color travelling over his chest some. When he turned around, he found his back wasn’t pretty either, the purple hues mixing with the ink there. Despite the bruises, the place Hakyeon felt imprinted the most on was his throat, where the vamp had touched him, skin to skin. But his throat was unmarked. Hakyeon put his hand over it, his fingers warm where the other’s had been icy, and shuddered.

He didn’t want to think about the vampire; there were too many questions and not enough answers. Vampires didn’t just let people go. It didn’t happen. 

Hakyeon squirted some bubble bath into the tub, swirling it around a bit more violently than necessary. Hongbin used to tease him for the bubble baths, but Wonshik facilitated this habit by buying new ones for Hakyeon every Christmas. Hakyeon gave the water an extra squirt, deciding that after last night, he deserved it. 

The water was scalding when he got in, and Hakyeon hissed as it burned every little abrasion he’d gotten. But after the burn faded, the hot water helped soothe the aches. Hakyeon washed the grime away, wiping all the residue makeup off his face, the dirt and sweat out of his hair, the blood crusted under his nails. And if he scrubbed at his neck just a little too hard, well, who could blame him. 

The water cooled, the bubbles popped. Hakyeon contemplated running himself a second bath, but decided against it, letting the water go and climbing out. He felt a little weak, but in a nice way, the warm and relaxed way. His skin was more flushed now, and he smelled like bubblegum instead of death. His shoulder was still tender, but this wasn’t the first dislocation it had suffered, and Hakyeon knew he’d survive. 

He slipped into an old ratty t-shirt, soft from dozens of washings, and a pair of sweatpants, then stood in the center of his kitchen, unsure what exactly to do with himself. He felt antsy, and yet also too tired to go anywhere, even if he had anywhere to go. He didn’t doubt Wonshik on his word, knew if he went in to HQ he’d just be taken back here. And there was nowhere else to go, not after the sun had set. Not any place he’d want to be, anyway.

He eyed the darkened window, decisively striding over to close the blinds. He hadn’t been afraid to go out into the dark in many, many years, and yet currently the thought of stepping outside his door made him rather nervous. He’d find it funny if he wasn’t so pissed. 

Hakyeon came to the conclusion that the vampire had let him go because he’d amused it. It was toying with him. Wonshik was right, Elimias were generally fairly nonviolent (Hakyeon touched his bruised shoulder gingerly, and wondered if this could be considered _nonviolent_ ) and that had, most likely, contributed, but in the end, it had been laughing at him. It didn’t consider him a threat, this little human that it had managed to down with seemingly no effort, that it could have killed but let go. It _let_ Hakyeon go. 

It had the power to end Hakyeon’s life, and it chose not to, and now Hakyeon had to live with that knowledge hanging over his head. It infuriated Hakyeon, and, somewhere under the fury, it terrified him utterly. And maybe that was the point.

Hakyeon focused on the anger, since, as a rule, it was a much more productive emotion, and spent the rest of the night bathing in the artificial light from his laptop, using any and all of his resources to find information on Elimias.

Elimias were hard to explain, and Hakyeon could tell when he was reading a block of information set down by a magic user versus a non user. 

Humans, and by extension, vampires, were bound to the laws of recoil, which tied into the laws of balance. It was all rather complicated and Hakyeon had zoned out when it had been explained to him in depth, way back when he’d first started hunting. The gist of it was, what goes around, comes around. There was more to it than that, every action, it didn’t have to be a strictly negative or positive action, having a sort of ripple, that bounced back. It affected magic users much more heavily than ordinary people, partially because magic just generated more recoil in general, and also partly because magic users tended to live unnaturally long lives, so they had more time for shit to bounce back to them.

Vampires got a lot of the brunt of that, being essentially immortal magic users (okay okay so the public pitch to vamps was that they were ordinary people who’d been infected by some weird disease and could be cured, if a cure could just be thought up, but Hakyeon knew they were humans who, by some strange old, powerful magic, had been changed into something more and yet less. No one knew exactly how it worked. Vamps didn’t need to breathe, and their hearts don’t beat, so the only thing that animated them was whatever magic was flowing through them. They were creatures of magic. And there was no cure for that).

Vamps had a bloodlust to them that was insatiable. No one knew exactly why, there were many theories, but whatever it was, it was their primary characteristic. Peace terms had been offered between vamps and humans, if only the vamps would promise to stick to animal blood, but it was a no go. Vamps could drink animal blood, but it didn’t give them whatever it was they needed. 

The act of murder, in and of itself, had intense recoil, and vamps killed a lot of people in their lifetimes. As vamps got older, they became stronger, both physically and magically, and they needed to feed less. But most didn’t. They lost their humanity as the centuries passed and just consumed anything they wanted, killing needlessly, losing themselves in the bloodlust. 

The recoil was what saved humanity from having to deal with vamps like this, and Hakyeon could only be grateful. As the decades turned to centuries the recoil weighed vamps down, slowly, steadily, like an anchor, and even though with their age came strength, the recoil made their weaknesses more potent. Most vamps over the age of two hundred couldn’t go outside on nights with a moon, because even that little bit of reflected sunlight was too much for them. And then as more years passed, the stars would become too much, and they would be relegated to living underground, sitting at the head of nests, using younger vampires to bring them sustenance. 

Elimias were the rare handful of vamps that had played their cards right from the start. They killed only what they needed to survive, and sometimes they slipped up, especially in their younger years, but the effort made all the difference. Many, most, of them didn’t actually make it to be centuries old. Other vamps, for various reasons, didn’t like Elimias, not least of all because they fucked up the inherent hierarchy vamps seemed to hold themselves to. And because they drank less blood at the start, Elimias tended to actually be weaker when they were young, making them easy targets. 

But if they survived, as they grew older they suffered very little recoil, and grew as powerful as the relics ruling from their underground lairs without the burden of thousands of lives on their backs. They could, as Hakyeon had just found out, still walk under the moon, even a full moon, could still hunt, still glamour, still move quickly. And the Elimia had been stronger than any vamp Hakyeon had had the displeasure of coming across before, not just physically but magically as well. For Hakyeon’s wards to have _no_ effect at all... Hakyeon couldn’t even fathom it. 

Thankfully, they were exceedingly rare. And not just that, but because of their desire to avoid any eventual recoil, they tended to be the least troublesome sort of vampire, feeding maybe once a month at most and avoiding conflict at all cost. Thank fuck, because if not, hunters and sucker cops would have a much harder time.

Hakyeon read all this, knowing it all already. The refresher didn’t hurt, but there was very little on the net he didn’t already know.

Eventually he was forced to admit defeat, as he looked towards his window and noticed the sun was coming up. He’d sat there, at his cheap, spindly kitchen table, all night. It wasn’t the first time, though it was no doubt not what Wonshik had in mind when he’d left Hakyeon home to rest.

Hakyeon would have to just wing it when it came to the Elimia, learn as he went. He’d figure something out, he thought as he stood, stretching. He had a map of the city on a corkboard hanging on the kitchen wall. The map was marked heavily, colored in, based on where Hakyeon thought specific blocks of vamps' territories began and ended, where attacks and successful hunts had taken place, etc. The center, the hub of downtown, had been previously, mostly empty. Now Hakyeon plucked a red pin from the board, examining the map for a moment before sticking the pin where the vamp had attacked him last night. Maybe there was a vamp living in that section of the city after all, he thought as he stared at the pin.

Hakyeon _would_ deal with this Elimia somehow, he would _find_ a way.

He closed his laptop and blearily ate some cereal, chewing slowly. As he did so he replied to the few texts he had. He primly told Wonshik he’d be back at HQ tomorrow night. He didn’t want to be stuck up in here another night, and he had paperwork to get done, if nothing else. 

After setting his alarm for noon, he fell facedown into bed, and did not move.


	2. Chapter 2

The alarm went off shrilly, and Hakyeon woke with a start. "Urgh," he mumbled, glancing at the time. "Urgggh." He thwacked his phone until it shut up. He contemplated going back to sleep, but he had things to get done, people to see, before the sun went down.

He stuffed a stale muffin in his mouth, downing it with instant coffee and vitamins. He'd pick up some better food on his way home today, after he'd visited his local charm twister. And by "better food" he meant Chinese takeout or maybe a pizza.

He didn't bother showering, simply splashed some water on his face, put a few products on (these all nighters wreaked havoc on his skin), brushed his teeth. He still smelled like bubblegum. He changed into some old worn jeans and a long sleeved tee, something that covered his tats. It wasn't so bad, covering them in the cooler months, but during summer it could really suck. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get his hair to cooperate, but was forced to just stuff a baseball cap over his head. After shoving his feet into a pair of black converses, he was ready to go.

"Don't look at me like that, it's too early to try very hard," he said to his reflection, which seemed to be judging him. His wards pinged at him. "Urgh."

He patted his pockets, made sure he had everything, stepped out of his door, and then promptly tripped. He landed on his hands, spun, and then was back on his feet in a flash. There was a small cardboard box sitting in front of his door, and he eyed it suspiciously. He cast his senses out, could feel no one was nearby, so whoever had left it wasn't around anymore.

He picked it up gingerly, and his wards didn't have anything to say about it, so that could only be a good sign. There wasn't anything written on it, he saw as he rotated the box, so it hadn't been mailed to him. Whatever was inside clunked around as the box moved. He pursed his lips. He needed to leave, but now he was curious, so he pried the folded flaps at the top open, and then promptly shrieked, dropping the box back on the floor. It fell onto its side, and its contents toppled out, shining harmlessly in the dim hall light. It was his silver dagger, the one he'd left on the street.

Hakyeon found he'd backed up against the wall, bracing his hands on the cool plaster, and he cast his senses out farther, harder, as if he could sense the Elimia nearby even during the day, but of course there was nothing.

After spending several minutes pressed against the wall, waiting and willing his heart to settle, Hakyeon told himself that it could have been Wonshik who'd brought the dagger over. But he discarded that idea quickly, since he knew Wonshik would have knocked, or simply let himself in. He had bad boundaries like that. And anyone else at his work would have brought the dagger back to HQ for him, not leave it on his fucking doorstep, like a cat bringing home a dead bird.

Hakyeon grabbed the box by one of the flaps, holding it between his thumb and forefinger like it _was_ a dead bird. He thought he'd seen— yes— there was a small slip of paper in the box.

Hakyeon snatched it up with his free hand, seeing small, tidy handwriting on it. He hoped it was from someone he knew, would be signed, but he didn't recognize the writing, and the note simply read, _You forgot something_.

There was a noise coming from Hakyeon's chest and it sounded a lot like a growl. He was pinching the note between his fingers so hard it was crumpling.

The Elimia knew where he lived. It knew. And it was definitely toying with him.

Hakyeon's fear turned to anger very quickly, and he eyed the dagger, still lying on the ground, and it gave him an idea. He went back inside his apartment, tossing the box into the corner of the kitchen, stuffing the note into the drawer by his landline. He'd burn it later.

He grabbed a jacket, and went back out into the hall, bending down to examine the dagger closely. It was definitely his. All the blood from two nights ago had been cleaned off, and he couldn't see any fingerprints, but that didn't matter. Using the jacket to cover his hand, he grasped the dagger by its wooden handle, careful not to touch it with his skin. He took equal care wrapping the jacket around and around it, until it was covered, hidden in the black fabric.

He locked his door and then strode down the hall, down the narrow flight of stairs, and out into the bright sunlight, heading into the heart of downtown.

There were a lot of high end charm and ward shops around, but Hakyeon passed them all by, with their tidy rows of amulets, little figurine key chains. The shop he eventually went into was narrow, cramped between a deli sandwich place and a second hand clothing shop. The sign on the door was flipped to closed, but the door was unlocked, and Hakyeon pushed inside anyway.

The lighting was dim, and the interior of the shop was stuffed with old wards and charms, most of them used and many no longer even working, as well as a lot of books on spellwork and warding. The shelves were overflowing with what was, to Hakyeon's eyes, a bunch of crap. His tattoos were chattering, giving him a headache, and the many live charms and wards in the shop were pinging back at him, a few of them physically rattling.

As he made his way through the narrow shelves, a charm flung itself at him, falling on Hakyeon's head then sliding down and sticking determinately to the side of his neck. Hakyeon yelped in surprise and then promptly pried it off, even though the charm squeaked at him in protest. It was round, looking like some sort of coin with runes carved into it, with a small hole in it where a chain had been linked through. He tried to put it down but it stuck to his hand, so he snagged it by the chain and pulled the coin bit off his skin. The chain wasn't charmed, so when Hakyeon let it go, the whole lot fell to the floor.

The damned thing followed him as he made his way to the back of the store, where the counter was, scooting along the stained carpet like it had a mission. It caught up with him and stuck itself to the side of his shoe, and with a sigh, Hakyeon left it there.

He rung the little bell on the counter, since no one was there. When there was no reply he rung it again, and again, until he was playing out a popular song, and then finally a voice screamed at him to pipe the fuck down. 

“Did you not see the sign?” the voice fairly shouted at him. “It says we’re fucking closed—” The door behind the counter burst open and Kyungsoo stormed through it, looking like a thunder cloud despite his sweet face and short stature. When he saw Hakyeon, he stopped, nostrils flaring as he put his hands on his hips. “Hakyeon.”

Hakyeon mimicked his posture. “Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes narrowed, and he turned smartly, going back through the door. “I’m on my lunch break.”

Hakyeon hopped over the counter, following Kyungsoo down a hall and into the back room, which had floor to ceiling shelves crammed with more crap, and a table in the center that Kyungsoo used as a workspace. It currently had a sandwich and soda sitting on it, presumably from the joint next door. “What do you want?” Kyungsoo asked, sitting down at the table and taking a rather large bite of his sandwich. 

Hakyeon took the seat opposite him, placing the jacket on the table. Kyungsoo eyed it. Hakyeon knew he recognized the warding of the knife inside, could feel it. “I ran into an Elimia a few nights ago.”

Kyungsoo dropped his sandwich. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Hakyeon.”

“I know, Wonshik already tore into me, but listen—” Hakyeon slowly unwrapped the dagger, still very careful not to touch it. The runes carved into the blade seemed to be shimmering, active in the presence of their caster. Hakyeon told Kyungsoo about the fight, about dropping the dagger, and then the subsequent finding of the dagger on his doorstep this afternoon. 

Kyungsoo was staring from the dagger to Hakyeon with an expression of utmost suspicion. “So an Elimia knows where you live and delivered your dagger back to your home,” Kyungsoo said slowly, and Hakyeon nodded. “And you’re telling me this, why? Do you want some new wards? You’d be better off moving, to be honest.”

“Well, initially, I was going to come see you because I needed a new blade, but then this turned up and— and it gave me an idea.”

Kyungsoo tore a bite out of his sandwich, staring daggers at Hakyeon. He waited. 

Hakyeon gestured to the dagger. “I haven’t touched it.”

Kyungsoo took a deep breath in through his nose, very slowly. His eyes had narrowed to slits. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting—”

“I want you to try and put a Trace on it.”

Kyungsoo seemed so outraged by that, that it took him several beats to find his words. “There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to _begin_ —”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Hakyeon mumbled, but Kyungsoo was talking over him.

“First off, I don’t know why you’d want to find an Elimia, especially not after it handed your ass back to you on a platter.” Hakyeon was about to interject but Kyungsoo bulldozed on. “Secondly, you want me to put a Trace. On an object. To find a vampire. An object I warded _against_ vampires, you now want me to overlay that with a spell to be _attracted_ to a vampire?”

“It was just an idea,” Hakyeon grumbled sourly.

“Just an—” Kyungsoo choked out in outrage before he clamped his mouth shut, sitting back. He stared down at the dagger silently, but Hakyeon could practically see the gears in his head turning. Kyungsoo was always up for a challenge, he just grumbled a lot. But he was the best sorcerer in the city, so Hakyeon always came back to him.

His willingness to overlook all the illegalities of Hakyeon’s job was a shining bonus. 

Finally, Kyungsoo said, “I don’t even know if this can be done.”

“Traces have worked in the past—”

“On humans, Hakyeon. Vampires are different.” He tapped his fingers. “And you don’t even know if the damned thing touched it, actual skin contact, and to leave an imprint, it would have to.”

“The blade was cleaned, so I think the chances that it touched it are high, also metal absorbs energy the best—”

“It didn’t touch the metal!” Kyungsoo fairly shrieked. “Do you really think a vampire picked a dagger up by its silver blade? If it touched anything it touched the wooden handle, and wood is different, and then even if it _did_ touch the blade for some reason, that was two nights ago. Most Traces are put on as soon as possible, within the hour.” 

Hakyeon huffed. “Will you try or not?”

“Yes.” Kyungsoo stood, striding to a shelf and pulling down a wooden box, heavily lacquered and covered in black writing. He slid the lid off and then picked the dagger up, using Hakyeon’s jacket to do so, before dropping the blade into the box. He replaced the lid. 

“Thank you,” Hakyeon said, genuinely meaning it.

Kyungsoo shot him a look that spoke volumes. “I didn’t say it would work.” He put the box to the side. “If you’d brought in the cardboard box you found it in, that would have had a higher chance of working. This,” he patted the wooden box, “has too much of you and me on it.”

“Yeah, well, I touched the box, sorry.” Kyungsoo didn’t deign that with a reply. “I do need a new dagger as well, if you have one on hand. I could get one from work but I’d rather snag one that’s already warded.”

Kyungsoo nodded shortly, and he went to a cupboard in the corner, opening its doors and peering around. Hakyeon knew that the real stuff, the actual magical, valuable articles Kyungsoo had were in this back room, rather than in the store proper. While Kyungsoo perused his items, Hakyeon took a bite of his sandwich. 

Kyungsoo eventually came back, carefully cradling a dagger in a leather sheath. “Don’t eat my food,” he snapped, but Hakyeon could tell there was no bite to it. He showed Hakyeon the dagger. It was longer than his old one, the blade double sided and thinner, with more of a point, and the wood of the handle was paler, probably oak instead of apple. “Will this do?”

Hakyeon took it, weighed it in his hand. “The blade is silver?” he asked, holding it nearer his eyes to examine the runes. They hummed as he drew his finger along them.

“No, I’m giving you a steel blade to hunt down vampires,” Kyungsoo said sarcastically. “Of course it’s silver.”

Hakyeon nodded, sliding the blade back into its sheath. “I’ll take it.” He fished into his pocket and drew out a wad of cash, handing it to Kyungsoo. 

Kyungsoo held it in his palm, eyes fluttering shut for a moment, and then tucked it into his own pocket. “That’ll do.” He put his hand on the wooden box, inside which Hakyeon’s old dagger rested. “This is going to take a while for me to do, since I need to strip off the old spells as well as put the Trace on.”

“How long?” Hakyeon asked.

Kyungsoo bit his bottom lip. “A week? Maybe less. I’ll text you.”

Hakyeon nodded, smiling as he got to his feet. He towered over the little sorcerer. “You’re my favorite charm twister,” he said teasingly, his grin growing wider.

“Call me a charm twister again and I’ll twist your head around,” he said, but he smiled at Hakyeon, cheeks bunching sweetly. The smile fell off his face as he added, “Be careful, please. Elimias are dangerous and it makes me nervous that one’s got you in its sights.”

“I’m on a lot of vamps’ shit lists, one more doesn’t make much difference,” Hakyeon said, still smiling softly. He pulled Kyungsoo into a hug before turning to leave with his new acquisition, but Kyungsoo stopped him.

“You have a stowaway,” he said simply, bending down to grab the charm that had stuck itself to his shoe earlier. He pulled, but it didn’t want to go. 

“Oh, yeah,” Hakyeon replied absently. “It flung itself at me.”

“A lot of the charms and wards in the shop are restless, they don’t like being stagnant, and no one ever comes in to buy them. This little guy seems pretty desperate,” he said with a grunt, pulling on the chain to no avail. “LET GO,” he screamed at it, and there was something in the command, and all the items on the shelves rattled. Hakyeon thought he saw a warded figurine retreat behind a snuff box in fear. The charm let go of Hakyeon’s shoe with a sound somewhere between a grumble and a fart. Kyungsoo held it up to his eye level to examine it. “It’s a nice little protection charm, the rune is unusual, stars instead of sun. It likes you.” He held it out to Hakyeon. “You can have it.”

“I don’t usually—” Hakyeon began. The charm was squeaking at him in excitement. 

“I know, you don’t like physical amulets, you prefer your stupid tattoos, but take it, it might help.” He looped the chain over Hakyeon’s head, and the metal settled cool against Hakyeon’s neck. “I don’t think I’ll get much use out of it anyway.”

The chain was just the right length to make the coin hang precisely over Hakyeon’s sternum. It had quieted considerably, sending out warm feelers to Hakyeon’s tattoos. He’d have to introduce them all properly later, but for now he simply stuffed the coin and chain under his shirt. “Just what I needed, more wards,” he said dryly. 

Kyungsoo smiled at him, ignoring his tone, and they hugged again. “I’ll text you in a few days.”

“Thank you.”

——

Hakyeon unlocked the door to his flat with one hand while holding his food with the other. He had, in the end, decided to get _both_ Chinese takeout and a pizza, figuring that should last him a good week. The foldable boxes of orange chicken and fried rice were balanced preciously on the pizza box. 

Once inside he put his food down on the kitchen table, sighing. The warmth of the wards and spells of the flat enveloped him, making him feel cocooned in safety. The sun hadn’t set just yet, the sky turning pink, but he was still grateful to be home, if only for a while. 

The new amulet around his neck pinged at him, a gentle nudge, and Hakyeon looked down at it in confusion just as a voice spoke up from behind him. 

Hakyeon jumped, letting out a short scream before he could stop himself. He knew the voice, had known it for years, but _shit_. He spun to see Wonshik standing by his refrigerator, holding his hands up peacefully. “Hey, just me.”

“Jesus fucking shit,” Hakyeon gasped, holding a hand over his pounding heart.

There was a long pause while Hakyeon attempted to catch his breath, and Wonshik silently watched him. “You’re a lot more shaken up than I thought you were,” he finally said numbly.

Hakyeon shot him his best stankface. “Shut up,” he retorted eloquently. “I didn’t give you a key to my flat so you could scare me to death with your stupid face.”

“Good, because that’s not why I’m here.” Wonshik snagged some files off Hakyeon’s kitchen counter, brandishing them. “I knew you’d be wanting to find information on the Elimia that attacked you, and also that you’re forever annoyed at not being able to access the database from your home connection, so.” He flicked the flies onto the table in front of Hakyeon. 

Hakyeon spread them out. There were four files. “There’s four Elimias in the area?” he squawked.

Wonshik shook his head. “No, there’s no Elimias in the area. At least, none on record. I had to widen the search considerably and expand the timeframe by fifty years.” He shrugged. “I just thought you never know.”

Hakyeon flipped the first file open and scanned it. There was no picture, but the Elimia described was female. “It was a male,” Hakyeon muttered, closing the file, and Wonshik took it off the table.

The second file also had no picture, and the Elimia’s physical appearance wasn’t exactly described in stellar detail, simply stating that it was male, of moderate height, and dark of hair. Hakyeon put it aside to be perused further as a possible lead. 

But as it turned out that was unnecessary, because upon flipping the third file open, Hakyeon was greeted with a small, grainy photograph of the Elimia that had attacked him. His hands stuttered. 

“That’s him,” Hakyeon said softly, and Wonshik bent to examine the photo closely. 

“You’re sure? That’s an iffy picture,” Wonshik asked.

“Yes,” Hakyeon said softly, “I’m sure.” He put the photograph aside, looking through the rest of the file. He’d last been spotted twenty years ago, in a larger city roughly eighty miles to the east. And his name—

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik sounded out slowly. “Well, it’s not much to go by, but it’s something, right?”

“I might have a plan, anyway,” Hakyeon replied, his eyes flicking to the drawer the note sat in. He gave Wonshik a genuine smile. “Thank you.”

Wonshik smiled back. “You ready to go in to work?”

Hakyeon’s window was fully dark. “Yeah.”

——

The first few nights back at work were spent inside HQ, helping Sanghyuk hone his sparring skills. The kid was improving quickly, and Hakyeon was proud of him. He was glad he’d decided to sponsor him, had convinced Wonshik that taking a rookie on was a good idea. 

But Hakyeon couldn’t spend all his nights hiding inside HQ, and that’s what he was doing, hiding. He was frightened, even though he hated admitting it, even to himself. It was the not knowing that was getting to him. Not knowing the Elimia’s intentions, why it let him go, if it was going to come back for him. 

He didn’t want to become paranoid. There were hunters that had lost it, couldn’t leave their houses after dark for one reason or another, and Hakyeon didn’t want to end up like that. He was _determined_ not to end up like that. So he pushed himself, going back out on patrol. If Wonshik noticed his skittishness, which Hakyeon was fairly certain he had, he didn’t say anything, didn’t mention the way Hakyeon stuck very close to his side. Hakyeon, who had always claimed to not need backup, had never minded working solo. Now he needed a babysitter.

The problem was, Hakyeon couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed.

And maybe, _maybe_ , he’d be able to put it down to being jittery, except it was only at certain times. Only after dark, and only when he was out, or home. And his wards were restless, the new amulet around his neck warming in a soothing way. It was a very calm charm, especially in contrast to Hakyeon’s wards. The near constant humming of his tattoos was driving him mad. 

If the Elimia was tailing him though, it didn’t show itself at all, and Hakyeon couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse.

As the nights wore on though, Hakyeon felt better, more settled. His wards didn’t go back to normal exactly, but he began to feel safe under the moon and stars again. He let himself wander away from Wonshik more and more on patrols, and nothing happened. Nothing vampire related, anyway. Some drunk guy tried to mug him, but, well, that hadn’t been an issue. 

The dreams didn’t stop, but Hakyeon wasn’t new to nightmares. And considering how utterly gruesome many of Hakyeon’s nightmares tended to be, the ones about the Elimia weren't bad. Not at all. Hakyeon just couldn’t forget those eyes. He felt like they were burning holes in him.

He was going to end this, one way or another, and if the Elimia wasn't going to show itself again, Hakyeon just had to find it instead.

One morning, at approximately ten a.m. and exactly five days after Hakyeon had given Kyungsoo his dagger, he received a text telling him it was ready.

Hakyeon rolled out of bed immediately, going to meet Kyungsoo at his shop. When Hakyeon rang the bell, Kyungsoo came out from the back looking more harried than usual.

“I hope you appreciate the things I do for you,” he said, nostrils flaring in agitation. 

“Of course I do,” Hakyeon replied, grinning as he hopped over the counter. “You’re the best sorcerer for at least twenty square miles, and I am very thankful you’re my friend.”

“Only so you can use me,” Kyungsoo sniffed, but Hakyeon could tell he was pleased.

The dagger was lying on a cloth in the back room, gleaming in the low light. Hakyeon reached out to pick it up, but then paused, looking to Kyungsoo for confirmation. Only after Kyungsoo nodded did he allow himself to touch it. 

It felt different, no hum of wards greeted him. It was like coming home and expecting your dog to come bounding up to you excitedly, only for there to be silence. It made Hakyeon a little sad. The runes were still carved into the blade, but they no longer glowed with life. 

“I had to strip them off, like I told you,” Kyungsoo said, like he had read Hakyeon’s mind.

Hakyeon picked it up, feeling for the Trace. The knife still had a buzz to it, so Hakyeon supposed that’s what that was. “Will the Trace work, do you think?”

Kyungsoo blew a breath out through his mouth. “I can’t say for sure one way or another. It took, it definitely took, but I can’t tell you how accurate it will be.”

Hakyeon twirled the blade in his hands. “How does it work?”

“Well,” Kyungsoo made a gesture, and Hakyeon wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey, “the closer you are to your target, the warmer it gets.”

Hakyeon blinked. “That’s it? I’m going to be running around downtown, playing a vampire hunter version of Hot and Cold?”

Kyungsoo crossed his arms, frowning. “That’s it?” he mocked. “Yes, that’s it, and it’s more advanced magic than you know. What did you expect, for it to fly through the air and point the way? This isn’t Pocahontas.”

Hakyeon carefully felt the hilt. “It’s warm now, it was warm when I picked it up.”

“Yes, because you’re downtown, and your vamp is somewhere around here.” He made shooing motions with his hands. “Go, find your creature of darkness.”

Hakyeon left the shop, the bell over the door tinkling. Kyungsoo followed him, leaning against the doorway, looking somewhat amused.

Hakyeon looked left, looked right, neither side of the street seemed particularly promising, and the knife did not point the way. He walked several paces one direction, holding the knife carefully, and then went the other, trying to discern a difference in temperature. 

Kyungsoo was laughing at him.

“I think it’s this way,” Hakyeon said, indicating left, further into downtown.

“Good luck,” Kyungsoo replied. “Try not to get arrested for seeming like a danger to society. Don’t forget, that is a knife, and you look weird enough even without waving pointy objects around.”

Hakyeon squinted at him.

——

Hakyeon spent quite a while leisurely walking around downtown. It was a nice day out, cool but not cold. The knife spent most of that time at a relatively tepid temperature. Hakyeon wasn’t sure it was working very well, but maybe it was just that, because of the buildings, he couldn’t wander freely.

He kept walking, and he was halfway down the block with his favorite bakery when the knife, suddenly, spiked in temperature. Hakyeon looked down at it in surprise, then around himself. Nothing stuck out. He kept walking, and the knife glowed ever warmer, but as he turned the corner, left, it began to cool again, just a little. He slowly backed up, running across the street and back experimentally, feeling the temperature fluctuate. There was excitement in him now, and he was about to run around to the other side of the block, to see if the dagger would be cooler or hotter there, but then his phone vibrated and startled him. 

It was a text from Wonshik, reminding him that he needed to come in a little earlier that day to help prep Sanghyuk for the hunt that night. 

Hakyeon hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. The sun wasn’t setting yet, but it would be soon, and Hakyeon decided he really didn’t want to be in this area after dark. 

He tucked the dagger away, back into his ankle holster, and made his way to HQ, deciding that after the hunt that night, he’d log in what he’d discovered. And tomorrow, he’d come back again, and narrow everything down further. 

Then he’d let the higher ups decide what was to be done.

——

“Maybe we should go in to check on him,” Hakyeon whispered feverishly. His wards were tingling.

“He’s fine,” Wonshik replied. “If he wasn’t, we’d know it.”

They were standing under a streetlamp, across from a nightclub that was positively overflowing with people. There were a pair of stoners smoking a blunt roughly five feet away from them, and Hakyeon’s nose wrinkled. At least they were downwind.

Wonshik was saying something, but Hakyeon couldn’t hear him over the pounding of the bass flowing from the club. “What?” he snapped, agitated. He didn’t take his eyes off the entrance of the club, didn’t want to miss Sanghyuk coming out. 

“I said,” Wonshik huffed, “that if he doesn’t come out in fifteen minutes, we’ll peek in on him, yeah?”

Hakyeon grumbled, but agreed. 

They didn’t need to go in, because five minutes later, Sanghyuk stumbled out, doing a fairly decent impression of someone who’d had two too many shots. Nevertheless, he resolutely made his way down the street, stumbling into the nearest building every once in a while for effect. Hakyeon could burst with pride. 

They didn’t move, watching like hawks as Sanghyuk walked steadily down the block. A few people glanced at him, but no one bothered him. Eventually he retched, and stumbled into an alleyway, beyond their sight. Hakyeon’s wards were warming, just slightly. This was the moment of truth. There’d been a few sightings around this club lately, and Hakyeon would have thought that would deter people, but for whatever reason, it had had the opposite effect. Teenagers. In the back of his mind, Hakyeon hoped that no vamp would bite tonight. Fishing worked, but for every successful trip, there were at least five duds. And as excited as Sanghyuk was, as ready as he was, Hakyeon was hoping tonight would end up just being another practice run.

He and Wonshik slowly drifted away from their lamppost, eyeing the mouth of the alleyway. Even with their wards, they couldn’t see Sanghyuk, the angle was wrong. Hakyeon wished Sanghyuk had picked an alley just a bit closer to the club, but he knew that wouldn’t have been as appealing of a target.

“You’re hurting me,” Wonshik hissed out of the corner of his mouth, and Hakyeon realized he’d grabbed onto Wonshik’s arm and was holding it in a viselike grip.

With effort, Hakyeon unclenched his fingers. The feeling of vampire was very heavy in the air, but Hakyeon hadn’t felt the burst, the waves in the air, that would indicate Sanghyuk’s wards had gone off.

Then there was movement, at the opening of the alleyway, and that wasn’t right— 

It was Sanghyuk, motioning them over, and Hakyeon cursed and sprinted across the street, throwing their cover away and not caring. He skidded to a halt in front of Sanghyuk, Wonshik on his heels, and grasped the boy by the shoulders, “What happened? Are you hurt?”

Sanghyuk looked upset, but no worse for the wear, and he shook his head. “No, I’m fine I— I spooked it.”

“Are you sure?” Wonshik said, voice urgent. “Because that’s what Hongbin thought—”

“I know, but, no— it was me, it was my fault, I got scared— I pulled my weapon out early—” Sanghyuk looked guilty, and Hakyeon gave him a little shake.

“It’s okay, we can fix this. Which way did it go?” Hakyeon asked, and Sanghyuk pointed down the alleyway. It looked like it cut all the way through the block. “Alright, we'll find it, yeah? We have to, it’s seen your face. Come on.”

They took off, running down the alleyway until it spit them out onto a fairly well lit street. Hakyeon’s wards were still humming, but he couldn’t tell which way the vamp had gone, couldn’t see into the shadows. 

“We’ll have to split up. You two go that way,” Hakyeon called, motioning to the left, “I’ll go this way.” Sanghyuk took off without question, but Wonshik stuttered, eyes wide. Hakyeon gave him a push. “You need to watch his back,” Hakyeon said sharply, giving Wonshik another push. “ _Go_.”

Wonshik stumbled back, and for a moment Hakyeon thought he might argue, but then he turned and took off after Sanghyuk. Hakyeon whirled and went in the opposite direction, dodging out of the light cast from the streetlamps and into the shadows. 

He hoped Wonshik pulled himself together. Hakyeon understood Wonshik’s fears better than most, after what had happened to Hongbin, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted during a hunt. 

Hakyeon’s wards sent a ripple out, and Hakyeon slowed, the energy pulsing through him in slow waves. He was close, they told him, and the sun on his back began to burn as he shifted his grip on his dagger, the new one, moving into a crouch. 

There was a dark alleyway looming before him, a short one that dead ended, littered with empty beer bottles and trash, but no vampire that Hakyeon could see. He looked around alertly, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Every ward he had was whirring with activity, the charm around his neck sending pulses of warmth out, but he could see no vampire.

He sensed rather than heard movement behind him, and he moved to turn, raising his dagger, but then he was being grabbed, his reflexes too slow. His wards went off, energy sizzling out of him with an almost audible crackle, but even without them, he knew it was a vamp that was touching him. There was no mistaking that, somehow.

Then he was being flipped, and the thought that oh, oh this is familiar, flickered through his mind before his back hit the pavement. He noted that he hit it considerably less harder than the last time. This was due to the fact that the vamp maintained its grip on his arm, while its — his — other hand shot out to cup the back of Hakyeon’s neck, slowing the fall. He set Hakyeon’s head down almost gently.

Then there was a knee pressed against his chest, the other pinning his right arm down, as the vampire crouched over him. The hand around the back of his neck moved to the front, resting there lightly. A pair of familiar, strange eyes looked down at Hakyeon. He’d never be able to forget those eyes.

“Taekwoon,” Hakyeon breathed out. He quieted his wards, and they settled back unhappily, still glowing warm, ready to go off again if need be. But Hakyeon knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Taekwoon blinked at him, the only reaction he gave to Hakyeon knowing his name. He didn’t correct him though. One point for the human, at least. 

This was not the way Hakyeon had envisioned this game would end. He’d hoped to find Taekwoon’s resting place, root him out there. But it looked like the vampire had decided to move first, when Hakyeon had finally properly separated from the pack. Maybe he’d grown bored, having had his fun. It was over. Hakyeon should have known better than to think Taekwoon would just let him go.

Taekwoon leaned down, and Hakyeon’s breath hitched, the vampire’s face far too close to his own for comfort. Without breaking eye contact Taekwoon reached over with his free hand, slipping his fingers around the handle of Hakyeon’s new dagger. He tugged, lightly, and Hakyeon considered fighting him, but in the end he let the vampire pull the blade from his grip without a fuss. Taekwoon flicked the dagger away casually, and Hakyeon heard it clatter somewhere far to his right.

“You’re usually more feisty than this,” Taekwoon murmured, and Hakyeon’s eyes darted down to watch his lips move before going back up to his eyes. They had darkened, a little.

Hakyeon licked his lips, his mouth feeling dry, and this time it was Taekwoon’s turn to break eye contact and watch his mouth move. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re too strong for me to fight.”

“Mm,” Taekwoon hummed. He ducked down, pressing his nose into Hakyeon’s hair, and inhaled slowly. Hakyeon shivered, shying away, but he didn’t get far.

“Stop playing with me,” he gasped out. “What do you _want_?”

Taekwoon was moving down, still— sniffing— he was _sniffing_ — his breath ghosting over Hakyeon’s ear, then his cheek. He moved, no longer pinning Hakyeon down quite the same way. He scooted lower, so he was half sitting on Hakyeon’s stomach, legs bracketing Hakyeon’s waist. Hakyeon’s heart was pounding so loudly he was sure the vampire could hear it, couldn’t miss it. 

“Get off,” Hakyeon panted. He didn’t bother squirming; after last time, he knew it wouldn’t do any good, but he still cringed a little as Taekwoon’s breath tickled his neck.

Taekwoon paid him no mind, continuing down to nose at the side of Hakyeon’s neck. It made the hairs on Hakyeon’s arms stand on end, all his instincts screaming danger at him, as if he needed that when his wards were shrieking their protests too, trying to repel Taekwoon and having no more success than a spiderweb trying to stop an oncoming train.

When Hakyeon felt the light brush of Taekwoon’s lips against his neck, his body responded without his permission, back arching upwards sharply in an attempt to dislodge the vampire. “Get _off_ ,” he cried shrilly, the sharp edges of fear threatening to drown him. 

“You smell nice,” Taekwoon murmured. Hakyeon could feel the words against his skin, and he shivered. Taekwoon’s breath puffed out, and Hakyeon knew he was laughing at him again. “Under all this distasteful magic you’ve slathered on, you still smell nice.” 

“You mean I smell _tasty_. I’m not a fucking—” he broke off with a sharp gasp because Taekwoon had licked a stripe up the side of his neck. “Oh god,” Hakyeon whimpered, screwing his eyes shut against the sudden warm spike of arousal that had caused. Now was not the time, he was still terrified out of his wits, and yet—

Taekwoon nibbled at the lobe of his ear, just a gentle scraping of blunt teeth, but it was enough to send Hakyeon’s wards into overdrive, and the alarm they sent pulsing through his body somehow only made everything more intense, more sharp and clear, everywhere Taekwoon touched him feeling almost electrical. 

Taekwoon had twitched, just a little, and then pulled back. Hakyeon glared at him. “They didn’t like that,” Taekwoon said in that soft voice of his. He paused. “But you did.” He pulled back enough to look at Hakyeon’s face, but they were still far too close.

Hakyeon squirmed, feeling his face heat up even as his eyebrows moved into a scowl. He looked up, past Taekwoon’s head, up at the stars. “I did _not_ —”

Hakyeon saw the edges of Taekwoon’s lips twitch. “I can smell it on you.”

Hakyeon choked on air, blushing furiously. After a moment he looked back at Taekwoon’s face, meeting his gaze, trying to decipher something, anything, in his serene face, to no avail. 

His eyes were so pretty.

Somewhere in Hakyeon’s mind, he realized Taekwoon wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, were he human, Hakyeon would have thought him feverish. 

The silence stretched on, Hakyeon’s breathing erratic, while Taekwoon’s chest was jarringly still. Hakyeon swallowed thickly, and Taekwoon’s eyes dipped down briefly to follow to movement. Hakyeon found his heart was pounding for all the wrong reasons, and he was trembling all over again.

It was on the tip of Hakyeon’s tongue to ask Taekwoon to end this— whatever it was. To just stop toying with him and finish it. But as he looked up at Taekwoon’s dark eyes, calm and unknowable, Hakyeon began to realize that maybe, that wasn’t what any of this was about. 

Taekwoon’s hands moved so they were resting on Hakyeon’s shoulders, bracing. He pulled back, sitting up, back arched, his hands sliding down Hakyeon’s chest, to his stomach, but he still didn’t look away from Hakyeon’s eyes. 

The motion conjured up other images, flashing through Hakyeon’s mind, and he made a noise, low in his chest, involuntary. Taekwoon stilled, that terrifying, unnatural vampire stillness, just for a moment, before he twisted around, his hands leaving Hakyeon’s skin.

Hakyeon blinked, the loss of eye contact making him feel like he’d surfaced from a dream. Taekwoon was doing— something— fiddling with— oh. Hakyeon’s stomach jolted.

Taekwoon turned back around, holding Hakyeon’s old dagger, the one that had been spelled with the Trace. It was glowing in Taekwoon’s presence. Well. At least Hakyeon would be able to tell Kyungsoo it had worked. 

Taekwoon frowned at the dagger, just a little, before tucking it away, inside his own jacket pocket carefully. 

Hakyeon huffed. “How did you know?” 

Taekwoon tapped his finger over Hakyeon’s chest, right above the triangular tattoo he’d gotten to prevent glamouring. “I have wards too.”

Hakyeon was mildly outraged. Of course Taekwoon wouldn't want Hakyeon tracking his daytime resting place but— all that, just so he could take the dagger? There was a beat of silence before Hakyeon burst out, “That’s it? All that for— for the fucking dagger?”

“Mm,” Taekwoon murmured. There was a pause as his eyes roved over Hakyeon’s face. Then he leaned back down, slowly, the motion almost catlike as he settled over Hakyeon’s body, pressing their chests flush. He whispered in Hakyeon’s ear, lips brushing the shell, “Did you want more?”

Hakyeon jerked, his pulse jumping. His wards flared up anew at that, sending a brief flash through Hakyeon’s body. He quieted them absently. Taekwoon was so warm, but he wasn’t breathing, body held still in that way only vampires could be. His lips were still brushing Hakyeon’s ear lightly.

Hakyeon was breathing shallowly, almost panting from the potent mixture of fear and arousal, adrenaline coursing through his veins. 

This was all wrong.

He turned his face towards Taekwoon’s, his nose grazing Taekwoon’s cheekbone as he did so. Their lips were almost touching, Hakyeon able to feel the warmth radiating from Taekwoon’s skin. Hakyeon’s lips parted on a shaky exhale.

_Did you want more?_

Hakyeon’s wards were screaming. He couldn’t look away from Taekwoon’s eyes.

Hakyeon opened his mouth to say— yes? No? He wasn't sure, but it didn’t matter, because Taekwoon was pulling off of him with alarming swiftness, head snapping to the side. 

Hakyeon blinked up at the sky. He heard the footsteps.

“Hakyeon!” a voice called, the sound echoing off the buildings. 

“Wonshik,” Hakyeon breathed. He looked at Taekwoon, everything rushing back, the reality of the situation. Suddenly, he was afraid all over again.

Another call of his name. Sanghyuk. The footsteps were very close now.

And then Taekwoon was gone. Hakyeon barely felt him move, fast as a cat and light as a shadow. He slipped into the darkness of the alley and then was gone. Hakyeon’s wards settled down tiredly, and without their frantic humming Hakyeon suddenly felt completely exhausted.

A shadow fell over Hakyeon, Wonshik having arrived at the mouth of the alleyway. He gave a choked cry of Hakyeon’s name, rushing towards him.

“I’m okay,” Hakyeon said, struggling to sit up. “I’m okay.” His limbs felt like jelly, and in the end, he needed Wonshik’s help to sit up. 

“What happened?” Wonshik asked, face full of concern. He was patting Hakyeon down. “Are you hurt?”

Sanghyuk came skidding into the alleyway, chest heaving. He reached out, resting his hand on Hakyeon’s head, as he stood over both Hakyeon and Wonshik, keeping watch like he’d been trained.

“I don’t know,” Hakyeon said slowly, in response to Wonshik’s questions. He shakily reached up to wrap his fingers around Sanghyuk’s wrist, trying to comfort him. Sanghyuk was trembling, just a little. 

“You don’t know?” Wonshik asked. He grabbed Hakyeon’s face, turning it towards him possibly a bit too roughly in his haste. Hakyeon didn’t have to work hard to look dazed and exhausted. “Shit, have you— were you glamoured?” 

“I—” Hakyeon stuttered, the lie he was about to tell tasting bitter in his mouth. “Maybe?” He blinked, looking away as Wonshik cursed. 

“I’m sorry,” Wonshik said, “we were chasing that vamp—”

“Did you get it?” Hakyeon asked vaguely.

“Yes, but— Hakyeon, I’m sorry—”

Hakyeon shook his head, then felt dizzy. “S’okay.” He paused. “I’m okay.”

Sanghyuk and Wonshik helped him to his feet, and Hakyeon found he genuinely needed the support. Before they left the alleyway, Hakyeon said, “My knife—”

Wonshik found it lying near a wall, and then the three of them stumbled back into the street, letting the warmth of the lights wash over them.


	3. Chapter 3

Hakyeon spent the next several days in a daze. A lot of people asked him a lot of questions, and to most of them he replied with, “I don’t know,” or, “I don’t remember.” The lie got easier. He truly was out of sorts, just not entirely for the reasons everyone came to assume.

Hakyeon was surrounded by excellent hunters. With Hakyeon and Wonshik’s help, they were able to piece together a fairly accurate representation of what happened for the records. They already knew Hakyeon had had a scuffle with an Elimia, and that previously on the day Hakyeon had been mysteriously attacked again, he’d gone looking for said Elimia’s daytime resting place using a Traced item (Hakyeon hadn’t been able to omit that, since Wonshik knew it, but he did lie about exactly how near to Taekwoon’s resting place he’d gotten). And then later that night, once Hakyeon had separated himself from the others, he’d been attacked.

This was where Hakyeon usually cried off, claiming he had no memory of what happened next until Wonshik had found him. But the Traced knife was missing. It didn’t take a genius to piece together that the Elimia had come back to protect its own skin. Hakyeon’s fellow hunters weren’t geniuses but they sure weren’t stupid either.

The one thing no one seemed able to figure out was why the Elimia had let Hakyeon go, not once now but twice, and Hakyeon didn’t have to feign confusion over that, though he had more information on that front than he would ever, ever let on.

Hakyeon wasn’t sure why he was lying. He could, surely, tell a fairly accurate representation of what had happened while still omitting the bits that shamed him. Elimia snuck up on him, downed him, took the knife, ran off.

Only he didn’t know if he’d be able to tell it like that without something giving him away, didn’t know if he’d be able to describe the way Taekwoon had pinned him down without blushing, didn’t know if he’d be able feign disgust at the thought of a vampire touching him, when Taekwoon’s hands hadn’t been icy cold but hot, feverish, and his nails had dragged down Hakyeon’s chest in a way that still sent shivers down Hakyeon’s spine, and not in the way that it should.

Hakyeon didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to remember the way he’d responded, because it was all wrong, it was sick, but maybe, maybe in the moment it was excusable, some strange misfiring of neurons under extreme duress.

Except the memory still burned, and Hakyeon still _wanted_.

So he repeated, “I don’t remember,” until he could almost believe it.

——

Approximately a week later Hakyeon found himself Summoned by the Dragon. It didn’t bode well.

“Ooooooh, you’re in troubleeeeeeee,” Sanghyuk singsonged, like some kind of fucking twelve year old. 

Hakyeon kicked out at him, and Sanghyuk danced away, laughing. “Why are you even here?” Hakyeon asked sourly. “Shouldn’t you be out training?”

“We’re done for the night,” Sanghyuk replied, and Hakyeon blinked. He hadn’t realized how late it was. Or early, depending on how you looked at it. HQ was underground, so there were no windows down here, no gaps between blinds for dawn sunlight to peek in through.

Hakyeon had been on desk duty since the attack. It wasn’t really by order, per se, it just seemed the wise choice, for now. Normally taking their best hunter out of the field would have seemed ludicrous for anything less than Hakyeon getting a limb chopped off, but he hadn’t been himself. Forgetful, spacey, unfocused. None of these things added well to the mixture that went along with active hunting. His coworkers thought his spaciness was caused by him coming down off a glamour. He was definitely acting like someone coming off a glamour.

Really he was just very mentally preoccupied and completely exhausted, but he was content to let them think what they would. 

“Still,” Hakyeon said, “why are you down here? Go home. Sleep.” He tidied up the paperwork he’d been filling out, tucking it back into its folder, and in turn tucking that back into its drawer.

“Maybe I just wanted to visit with my oldest—” Hakyeon shot him a look “—and wisest mentor.”

“Nice save,” Hakyeon muttered, and Sanghyuk laughed. Hakyeon knew Sanghyuk was just checking up on him. Wonshik had been doing it a lot as well, poking his head in a few times a night. It was slightly maddening. Not to mention it made Hakyeon feel all the guiltier for lying to them. He was fine.

When Hakyeon set off down the brightly lit hallways, heading to the Dragon’s office, Sanghyuk followed on his heels. “Why are you following me?” Hakyeon asked, elbowing his protege in the ribs.

“I’m curious,” Sanghyuk replied in a hushed whisper, as if they could be heard by the Dragon from this far away. Hakyeon rolled his eyes, but secretly he was a bit nervous as well. 

The door to the Dragon’s office was closed, the plaque on the door gleaming in the artificial lighting, _Supervisory Agent Wu Fan_ stamped into the brass. Sanghyuk gulped, wide eyed as Hakyeon knocked twice.

After a few seconds pause a voice called from inside, “The door is open.”

Hakyeon cracked the door open, poking his head in. “You wanted to see me, sir?” He could feel Sanghyuk lurking behind him, trying to peek in. Hakyeon reached back and pinched whatever bit of skin he could find. 

Wu Fan, or Kris, as he was called down here (his nickname was “the Dragon” but no one actually called him that to his face), was sitting behind his desk, looking quite imposing. His expression shifted when he saw Hakyeon. He looked relatively pleased to see him, and Hakyeon breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Ah, yes, Hakyeon, come in.”

Hakyeon did so, stepping inside neatly and shutting the door in Sanghyuk’s curious face somewhat sharply. At Kris’s gesture, he took a seat in the chair oppose him. It was considerably less cushy than Kris’s, but Hakyeon was under the impression that a good deal of Kris’s job was wholly to make people as uncomfortable as possible. 

Kris was a double agent. He worked both for the underground network of vampire hunters as well as the sucker cops. The people in the underground knew this. The sucker cops and the proper bureaucracy did not. He was a supervisor of some sort over there, from what Hakyeon understood, something relatively high up. They got a lot of good intel from him. He worked hours there and then after dark, came here. Everyone was of a mind that he didn’t seem to sleep, ever. Hakyeon was pretty sure there was a tattoo for that.

Kris took a moment to tidy some papers on his desk, setting a pen neatly aside, and Hakyeon waited. “How have you been?” Kris finally asked, his tone somewhat stiff.

Hakyeon knew he wasn’t asking about his current hobbies or the shows he was watching. Kris was not a touchy feely sort of person. Hakyeon was fairly sure he had wards just for the sake of making people uncomfortable, to make him more intimidating. And Hakyeon knew he had wards that detected lying, so Hakyeon would have to tread carefully here. “I’ve been recovering, sir, but I am still not back up to full speed,” Hakyeon said truthfully. “I apologize for any inconvenience taking me out of the field has caused you or the department.” 

Kris made a sharp gesture, like he was flicking away a fly. “We’re managing, though I think your skill set is being wasted filing paperwork, which is why I have brought you here.” He pushed his chair back, bending to pick something up off the floor. It turned out to be a box full of case files. He set it on his desk, making an _oof_ noise as he did so. He repeated this process twice more, until three boxes sat on his desk. “I have an assignment for you.”

Something must have flickered across Hakyeon’s face, because Kris added. “It is not something that requires any field work. In fact, I would advise against that for now, even were you not... in the state you are in.” His tone made it evident that he did not understand being so shaken up by a vampire, especially not for a seasoned hunter.

Hakyeon remained silent, even if his pride stung. Kris had never been faced with an Elimia, and Hakyeon didn’t think he did much field work anymore. It was easy to forget how horrible things could get out there when you stayed behind a desk. And Hakyeon knew that no hunter that came up against an Elimia would be able to escape without feeling at least a little shaken. Even if not for quite the same reasons Hakyeon felt shaken.

He shut that line of thought down quickly.

Kris was looking at him expectantly, and when Hakyeon opted to remain silent, he patted the boxes. “This is all the information we, as well as the VCF, have managed to collect on the nest in the east end.” Hakyeon’s eyes widened. This was quite a bit of intel. “I want you,” Kris said slowly, “to go through all of this, and see if you can’t narrow down the location of the nest’s daytime resting place.”

Hakyeon let out a breath through his mouth, heavily. “With all due respect, sir—”

“I don’t expect you to find me an address,” Kris interrupted, “but right now, all we know is they are somewhere in the densest part of the east end, and while we’ve been able to eliminate some locations, we’ve still been left with a circle of land almost ten miles across. I just want it narrowed down some.” Kris glared down at Hakyeon. “You will do this, attempt to do this, using the information that has been collected and, if you must, daytime ventures only. You are not to go into the east end after dark, especially not alone.”

Hakyeon swallowed, nodding readily.

Kris seemed satisfied. “You have good instincts, Hakyeon. Don’t feel too pressured to deliver, any intel you can give on this matter will be useful.”

Don’t feel pressured. Ha. “If I might ask, sir—” Hakyeon said, and Kris gave him a look that said, no, he may not ask, but Hakyeon plunged on anyway, “what exactly are you planning to do if we’re able to locate the nest in the east end?”

Kris squinted at him. “I will be turning the information over to the VCF branch.” 

As your own, Hakyeon thought a little bitterly. It rubbed the wrong way, just a bit, but Hakyeon wasn’t in this line of work for applause or recognition. If it helped get rid of the nest in the east end that would be enough. And Kris handing the information over as his own might get him promoted. The higher up Kris could get into the VCF’s organization the better it was for them. 

When Kris spoke again, it was a little gentler. “We do not have the manpower here to take down a nest like the one in the east end, nor the resources. Even if we were to succeed, the losses we’d suffer would almost make the venture not worth it. It’s best to turn the information over to the VCF and let them take care of it. They will be able to squash it, while we might just make them angry.”

Hakyeon sighed. “Yes, you’re right, sir.” Hakyeon and his fellow hunters might be better fighters, but there were too few of them, it was true. What the sucker cops lacked in talent they made up for in numbers. They had more recruits than they knew what to do with.

Kris gestured to the boxes. “Take these and go home. You look exhausted.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” 

Hakyeon enlisted Sanghyuk’s help in carrying the boxes, since the boy turned out to be outside pressing his ear to the door. As if that would do anything when Hakyeon knew the damn thing was charmed. 

“Why do I have to carry two and you only have to carry one,” Sanghyuk complained as they walked.

“I’m old, remember,” Hakyeon replied lightly. Sanghyuk groaned. 

They put the boxes down beside the stairwell leading up to the ground floor. “You,” Hakyeon said to Sanghyuk, “go home. I can’t exactly carry these back to my flat, so I need to find Wonshik so he can give me a lift. If he’s still here.”

“He always here,” Sanghyuk muttered, looking down at his feet as he shuffled them.

Hakyeon looked at Sanghyuk sadly. He knew Sanghyuk didn’t understand, fully, but he tried. He could, at least, grasp the awfulness of the situation. “He’s down in the ward, then? By the cells.” Sanghyuk nodded, mouth twisting, and Hakyeon reached out to pat his shoulder. “Thank you.” He moved his hand up to ruffle Sanghyuk’s hair, and that got a weak smile out of the kid.

When Hakyeon was halfway down the hall, Sanghyuk called out softly, “What was he like?” Hakyeon turned to see Sanghyuk was staring past him, at the direction in which Hakyeon was walking. “Hongbin. Before.”

Hakyeon swallowed down the lump in his throat. “He was— was funny and sweet.” He paused. “A good friend.”

There were no words that could convey everything Hakyeon wanted, so he clamped his mouth shut, turned, and walked away.

HQ had several floors to it, all of them underground, and the ward was on one of the lower levels, so Hakyeon took the main stairwell down, down, down. It got chilly down here, many of the walls damp despite their better efforts, and Hakyeon shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. 

The door to get into the ward was thick metal, and it needed the person going in (and out) to swipe their keycard in, as well as put their index finger on a little pad to be scanned, to both make sure the person had authorization and that the keycard matched the person going in. The only other doors in the entire place that had this much security were the one to the archives and the main door into HQ. There was one door in and out of this place. It was a fucking fire hazard but it was the price of security. 

Hakyeon swiped his card into the slot, and then pressed his finger to the pad when it lit up. It took a few seconds before it beeped, the light flashing green, and he was able to turn the knob, heaving the heavy door open. 

He knew where he was going. He used to come down here with a bit more frequency before he just couldn’t stomach it anymore. The cells Hakyeon was looking for were down a long hallway with yellow lighting, all painted brick wall on one side and thick, warded metal doors lining the other. The doors had two slots to them, a top one that people could peek into, and a bottom one which food — Hakyeon supposed in a sense it was food — was to be pushed through, and hulking clasps which locked them shut. All the doors were slightly ajar, except one.

Wonshik was sitting on the cement floor across from the one closed door, knees drawn up to his chest. His eyes didn’t stray from the metal door as Hakyeon approached, but he definitely knew Hakyeon was there, and that it was him. No one else came down here. Hakyeon’s footsteps felt too loud in the silence.

Hakyeon stared down at Wonshik, and Wonshik stared blankly ahead at the door. “Why do you do this to yourself?” Hakyeon asked softly. “It’s not him, anymore.”

There was a gratingly loud thud, the sound of something heavy slamming into the door from the inside. Hakyeon jumped, startled, and then found himself fighting back tears. An alien, high pitched giggle was emitting from behind the metal door. It cut off as quickly as the thud had happened. 

“He’s in there somewhere,” Wonshik replied, barely audible. 

Hakyeon bit down so hard on his tongue it started bleeding. He wasn’t here to tear Wonshik down. He sensed the hope Wonshik had was, on many days, the only thing which kept him getting out of bed. Even if it was a fool’s hope. Vampirism couldn’t be cured. It would never be cured, no matter what the politicians on television said. It was a permanent state. The only thing that could free them from it was death. 

Hongbin was scratching at the door, muttering something unintelligible. He’d stopped speaking coherently a month after he’d been put in the cell. They’d stopped trying to talk to him altogether about six months ago. They just let him scream, and laugh, and in between, let the silences stretch on. 

Hakyeon thought it would have been kinder to put a stake through Hongbin’s heart, but Wonshik— he hadn’t been able to let go. It wasn’t Hongbin anymore, it wasn’t. The lack of human blood, the bloodlust, had driven him mad. They gave him pig’s blood, a lot of it, but it didn’t seem to do much. They were starving him to death, but he couldn’t die. And yet even after listening to Hongbin slowly descend into madness, Wonshik just couldn’t sign off on the order to end him. He held onto the belief that maybe one day, there would be a cure. Hakyeon suspected he knew how ridiculous this notion was, but he just couldn’t seem to give it up. To give Hongbin up.

Wonshik was still staring at the door. 

“I need to talk to you,” Hakyeon said. No reply. “I’ve been given an assignment by the Dragon. It’s about the nest in the east end.”

Wonshik blinked, and his face turned so he could look up at Hakyeon. Thank God. “What?”

“Let’s talk about it above ground.” Wonshik seemed dazed. “It’s after dawn, come on—” He grabbed Wonshik’s upper arm gently, tugging him to his feet. “Let Hongbin sleep. Come.”

Hongbin’s mutterings followed them all the way back to the stairwell, where the heavy security door slammed shut and silenced them. 

——

“Do you think you’ll be able to do it?” Wonshik asked as he carried all three boxes up the stairs behind Hakyeon. He wasn’t even puffing. 

Hakyeon let out a frustrated sigh, frowning down at his keys as he looked for the one that unlocked the door. Wonshik laughed at him.

“No pressure, though,” Wonshik said, in a voice that Hakyeon supposed was trying to imitate Kris’s.

“Augh,” Hakyeon grumbled, and Wonshik laughed harder.

Hakyeon had him put the boxes in the living room. He had a feeling he was going to need a lot of space for this, and the kitchen table was too small. Hakyeon rubbed his hands roughly over his face as he stared at the boxes on the floor. “Nrgh.”

Wonshik patted him. “I have some notes, if you want. Just a few bits of information I’ve gathered on the nest.” He laughed. “Like you need more intel to sift through.”

Hakyeon shook his head. “No, I want it, any intel you’ve gathered is probably good intel.” He tapped the nearest box with his foot. “I am pretty sure a lot of this is going to be useless. Late night calls sent in by little old ladies who got startled by their cats farting and thought a vamp was at their window.” There were so many false alarms on record. It made sifting for actual information difficult. Genuine vamp sightings were useful. Everything else, not so much. “Anything you give me will help.”

“Alright, I’ll bring it by later today, after we’ve both gotten some rest.” Wonshik eyed Hakyeon critically. “You’ve been looking really tired lately.”

Hakyeon felt his cheeks turning red, so he rubbed a hand over his face to hide it. “Yeah. Well. I haven’t been sleeping too good.”

When he looked over at Wonshik, his expression had softened. “I’m here, you know, if you need me.”

Hakyeon reached out and pulled Wonshik into a tight hug and Wonshik gurgled. “I’m really glad I have you, Wonshik,” Hakyeon said genuinely. He felt maudlin, all of a sudden. Blame the lack of sleep. “You’re a good friend.”

“Oh god,” Wonshik said, “get off me.” Hakyeon clinged harder.

When they pulled apart, Wonshik wasn't looking at him, cheeks pink. “Try to get some rest, yeah?” Wonshik mumbled, avoiding Hakyeon’s eyes. With a sigh, Hakyeon agreed.

When Wonshik was gone, Hakyeon pried the lids off all three boxes. They were stuffed to the brim with file folders. “This is going to suck,” Hakyeon muttered. He had a spare map of the city around somewhere. He’d find it, later, and use it to begin coloring in potential nest locations.

As it was the sun was up, warm golden light seeping in past the closed blinds, and Hakyeon really did need to try and sleep. So he stripped down to his boxer briefs and flopped into bed, falling unconscious rapidly. 

He woke a few hours later, a little before nine, sweating and tangled in his sheets. He’d been dreaming about— eyes, eyes and a pretty little mouth— a warm hand on his throat—

He groaned, rolling over onto his front, burying his face into his pillow. In his waking hours, he could direct his thoughts away from Taekwoon by sheer force of will if nothing else. But when he was unconscious, the thoughts crept back.

 _I don’t remember_ , he said, over and over.

But he did remember. He remembered everything. And his subconscious seemed intent to relive it every night, and add a few details on—

Sex with vampires was illegal, but it was more than that. It was something people didn’t talk about, didn’t mention, not even in hushed whispers. It was a shocking topic. A few years back a talkshow host had _implied_ it on air, and the backlash had cost millions and the show ended up getting taken off the air. It was utterly taboo. Humans spent their nights living in fear due to these creatures, any sort of fraternizing with vampires went against all moral and legal codes. They were monsters.

Of course, there were a handful of people out there who seemed fixated on the topic. One had to dig deep into the internet to find them though. All these people ever did was talk about it (and if the VCF caught them at it they would haul their asses in for it), since, as far as Hakyeon knew, no human had ever actually had sex with a vampire. If vampires could even have sex (there were many theories on this topic, Hakyeon knew).

Hakyeon had always thought these people were more than slightly mental, horny teenagers most likely, who’d never actually seen a vampire. 

Now here he was, driven to repeated wet dreams by a fucking vamp. He was too old for wet dreams, but his body hadn’t seemed to realize this.

He groaned into his pillow and rolled his hips against his mattress. Some nights, he tried to take the high road, would get up and take a cold shower, but more and more, he found it was easier to just—

“Ah,” he breathed, rutting downwards. He gasped out a name, a shuddery, “ _Taekwoon_.” Shame burned heavy in his belly, but fuck, he couldn’t find it in himself to care anymore. 

His hands clenched into his pillow, his hips stuttering as he came. 

——

Hakyeon sat in the middle of his living room floor, the early morning light drifting in, grey and chilly. The empty case boxes sat pushed up against the wall, their contents spilled all over the floor, spread out and open on every inch of available space. When he’d run out of floor space he’d begun pinning notes to the walls. His landlady would not be happy with all the pinholes, but Hakyeon didn’t care. 

His new map didn’t look new anymore, colors overlaying so much that in many spots it had turned a muddy brownish color, and Hakyeon had had to buy four more sets of pins to stick in. Light blue to mark reported sightings, purple for confirmed sightings, green for places missing persons were last seen, yellow for all the establishments that were open after dark. His map looked like a child’s craft project gone awry.

He tossed his red marker down and then flopped onto the carpet in despair, mussing up a few files.

Really, he’d done what he’d been asked. Better than what he’d been asked. Wonshik had been impressed the last time he’d come over. Then he’d hauled Hakyeon into bed, threatening him with a sedative if he didn’t get some fucking sleep, but that was beside the point.

Hakyeon had managed to narrow down the nest’s location to three possible areas. But he still wanted to narrow it down more, get closer. There was still too much ground to cover. And he’d run out of intel to go off of.

He’d have to gather more himself. 

He sat up, the papers around him flurrying, questioning whether or not that was wise. He’d been doing better, aside from the lack of sleep. That wasn’t wholly new though. Hakyeon was a workaholic, from time to time. That wasn’t necessarily the case here, but, well. 

He shifted uncomfortably, blocking out the memories, the dreams. There were other matters at hand.

The clock said eight A.M. and Hakyeon sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. He’d do it, he’d go into the east end. Now. During the light of day. He didn’t have much choice. 

He tottered off to shower, letting the spray wake him up a bit more, and after he got out he felt a bit better. Before he left he downed a quick cup of instant coffee. It scalded, but Hakyeon kind of welcomed it. 

It was a bit grey out, a bit cloudy, but still bright enough to set Hakyeon at ease. He hated being so skittish. It never used to be like this. He’d used to go solo nearly all the time, hadn’t liked partnering up. And everything had always gone fine. He was confident in himself, in his skills, and had never been let down.

But then Hongbin— and after that, Hakyeon began to doubt things. And after that Wonshik insisted they stick together, and now Hakyeon had grown used to it, felt vulnerable when someone wasn’t at his back on a hunt. 

And then the Elimia had come along, and now even when Hakyeon wasn’t on a hunt, he felt open, exposed. The unshakable feeling of being followed haunted him, made his wards prickle after dark. He could no longer tell if he was being paranoid or not, seeing shadows where there were none. He couldn’t think why the Elimia would _still_ be tailing him, but the feeling was there, every night he went out, nonetheless.

The hours of daylight were the only time Hakyeon felt peaceful anymore, the only time his wards were silent, and he wondered if this was what it was like to be a normal citizen. Running around under the sunlight, rushing to get all the day’s tasks done before the sun disappeared for fear of the monsters in the dark.

Hakyeon didn’t like it. He wasn't going to surrender to this. 

His converses made soft noises as he walked along the pavement. No one paid him any mind, and it was nice. Quiet. He took a bus down to the east end, to the first hot spot. It wasn’t a very long ride, but he nearly dozed off anyway. 

Hakyeon spent the morning and most of the afternoon walking around the east end lazily. Most of the buildings here were grey. Even when they were painted other colors, it all just seemed grey. There were more stray animals around here than he was used to, more trash in the gutters, bars on every window. 

Nothing stood out. His wards remained silent. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting; maybe to walk by a building and have all his wards yell at him. It didn’t happen. He combed through all three red areas on his map, but nothing popped out him. Maybe it was because he was so tired, but Hakyeon was inclined to think it just wasn’t going to be this easy.

The sun began to drift towards the horizon, and Hakyeon was getting frustrated. He ducked into a little cafe, feeling slightly desperate. The floor was checkered and sticky as Hakyeon walked across it. There were a couple of people sitting at the chipped tables but it was eerily quiet. The girl behind the counter didn’t smile as she asked, “What do you want?”

“An americano, small, please,” Hakyeon replied. The girl punched some buttons on the register, snatching his money out of his hands. “I’ve just moved in a few blocks from here,” he started, and she sighed heavily, but he plunged on anyway, “and I was wondering if there’s any parts around here to stay away from after dark?”

The girl looked at him askance. “Uh, yeah, this whole area.” She tossed his change at him, and Hakyeon dejectedly put it in his pocket. She appeared to take pity on him and added, “But especially down by the canal, no one ever goes there after dark.” She puttered off to get his drink. “Really though,” she called, “you shouldn’t be wandering these parts after dark.”

She came back with his coffee, and he thanked her and left. 

The canal, Hakyeon mused. It cut the east end in half, and was used by many factories in the area. He thought back to his map. There was one hot spot that overlapped the canal, one cluster of blocks that matched all the criteria in that area. 

Hakyeon walked, trying to remember the details of the map, all the little yellow pins. There were a few places open after dark in the red zone by the canal, but not many, and there was a suspiciously empty patch in the middle of that red zone. 

He went in that direction, taking a sip of his coffee and then promptly making a face and spitting it out. The next trashcan he passed he tossed the cup into, wiping his mouth.

There was a bar, open until the wee hours of the morning, Hakyeon recalled. He’d go there, he decided, seeing what he could see, then he’d go home. He didn’t want to wander aimlessly, wanted to stick to areas there’d be people at. Bars and clubs were always a safe bet, always people milling around after dark, no matter the neighborhood. He didn’t want to go off alone, he’d stay under the lights, near the pack. 

He thought about calling Wonshik as he walked, the sky above him turning pink. No, he decided, picking up his pace. Chances are Wonshik would call in the cavalry with the sole purpose of dragging Hakyeon out of there. 

The street lamps flickered on, even though the sky was still blazing. Hakyeon yawned widely. His wards began to prickle, just a bit, and he shook himself. Stay focused.

There were more places still open, more people out, than Hakyeon had anticipated. As he walked, the sky darkening, the lights in windows began flickering out, people rushing to go home. It made Hakyeon pick up his pace. 

By the time he reached the street he was looking for, it was full dark out, but there were still quite a few lights on in the buildings along the block. Most of them were probably places that were still closing up. Hakyeon passed a sandwich shop that he knew was open twenty four hours. It had runes carved over the doorway and quite a few people crowded inside. 

The bar was a bit further down the street, narrow and also with runes carved over the door, some people loitering outside. Hakyeon pushed the door open. It smelled like alcohol and stale cigarette smoke, and there weren’t many people there. Not nearly as many as Hakyeon had been anticipating. The music was soft and crackly, like the speakers were on their last legs.

Hakyeon sat at the bar, asked for a gin and tonic, and looked around. This was depressing even for the east end. It was, also, markedly different from the sandwich shop just a block up. It had much fewer people, and that was odd, because it actually looked cleaner, better kept. Sure, it had less food options, but Hakyeon rather thought this place had less of a chance of finding a roach in the food than the sandwich joint.

A group of three men walked in, huddled near one another as if cold, talking in soft voices. They went straight to a booth along the wall, the surety of their movements suggesting they were regulars. Hakyeon got the impression the small handful of other people in here were also people who came here with frequency. It made Hakyeon stick out. He didn’t like it.

The bartender, a blond man in his late twenties Hakyeon would guess, placed a coaster on the bar and put Hakyeon’s drink on it with a light thud. Hakyeon thanked him softly. The glass was slightly damp with condensation, and the drink itself was alright. A gin and tonic was a safe bet as a rule. Not much to fuck up there. 

“You’re new,” the bartender said, wiping down another portion of the counter. 

Hakyeon sipped his drink. He couldn’t tell if the bartender meant new to the bar, or new to the area, or both. In the end he said, “Yeah. Just moved here.” The bartender made a noise, like he was saying, _Obviously_. “How could you tell?”

“Nobody wanders around here after dark alone,” he said simply.

Hakyeon laughed quietly and said, “Most people don’t wander anywhere after dark alone.”

The bartender shot him a look that spoke of extreme judgement. “Well, yeah, but _especially_ not here.” 

One of the men that had come in earlier came up to the bar then to order a pitcher of beer, and the bartender didn’t say anything more to Hakyeon while he bustled around.

It felt cloistered in here somehow. Maybe it was because of all the wards, and the atmosphere, but something was just oppressive in the air. And Hakyeon didn’t like the curious glances he kept getting. He finished his drink, ice clinking in the glass, flipped some bills onto the counter, and left.


	4. Chapter 4

The air didn’t feel so heavy once Hakyeon was back outside, and he breathed a sigh of relief, darting to the side so he could linger in the darkness, leaning against the building. It was eerily quiet. He looked left, where the sandwich shop was still lit up, open, as he knew it would be. There were still people inside, and a handful of other people were loitering in that direction, smoking and talking too quietly for Hakyeon to hear.

Hakyeon turned his head to look the other way, and even though he knew nothing was open that way, the emptiness still made the back of his neck prickle. The streetlamps were on, as bright as they were on the rest of the block, but not a single person was walking that way. All of the lights in the buildings had been shut off.

He had promised himself nothing risky tonight. As it was, if Kris found out he’d come skulking down here after dark he’d have Hakyeon’s ass. And at this point, he’d seen enough to be able to accurately say that the nest was out in this specific area somewhere, and potentially that way, down the street that was somehow dark despite all the lamps.

Hakyeon bit his lip. “Oh, fuck it,” he muttered, slinking along the wall. He’d just investigate a little, he wouldn’t wander far. He needed to make sure this chunk of the east end was actually deserted, and it wasn’t just this block. He needed to narrow this down, needed to be _sure_.

He walked slowly, each step careful, quiet, as he listened, felt his wards tingle. The problem was they were always tingling around here after dark, had been tingling a little earlier, and he couldn’t tell if they were tingling more than usual or not. He didn’t think so.

With each step he felt more and more jittery, until he was so tense he was trembling, the urge to run in the opposite direction almost palpable. Hakyeon might have obeyed, but the oak tree tattoo on his forearm had grown warm, and he realized this was a spell. It was a Push, and a heavy one. Usually they only made ones against vamps, but Hakyeon knew ones against humans existed. It hadn’t been here during the day, Hakyeon had been here in the daylight, in this exact spot.

He paused, leaning heavily against the wall of a drycleaning place, breathing deeply. Even knowing the terror was mostly artificial, it still soaked down to his bones, still felt real. His wards were definitely tingling more than usual, but for all Hakyeon knew, they might be reacting to his fear rather than any actual tangible threat. 

He looked left, back at where the bar and sandwich shop were open. They were quite a ways away. Hakyeon hadn’t realized he’d walked this far; no wonder the Push was getting so bad. He looked the other way. There was nothing he could see, not even with the help of his wards, just bright circles of yellow light and empty shadows. 

He was very near a cross street, and he carefully stepped towards it, finding his feet were dragging. He was going to peek around the corner, take note of which way the Push was coming from, and then get the fuck out of there. If he went too far into it, he could start hallucinating, and as it was it was getting difficult to breathe. 

Hakyeon reached the corner, the edge of the building, and took a deep breath in through his nose. He turned, carefully, peeking out around the corner, and then slapped his hands over his mouth to keep himself from screaming. There was nothing but darkness, all the street lamps were out, not even flickering, just out, and the Push hit him so hard he felt like he was drowning, his vision going a little spotty. 

He pulled back, slamming his back into the wall, both hands pressed over his mouth. His tattoos were starting to burn, while the amulet on his chest went icy cold. He’d fucked up. He hadn’t been expecting to stumble into the nest so soon.

He turned, planning to haul ass back to the bar, no longer caring about stealth, but there was movement ahead of him, a vamp peeling itself out of the shadows cast by the streetlamps. Hakyeon stepped forward, pulling his dagger out of his jacket pocket, intent on taking it down and then running, but the shadows were still shifting, and then there was another vamp beside the first. 

Hakyeon breathed heavily, lips pressed firmly together, trying to fight down the panic bubbling inside of him. He needed to get out of there. The Push alone was threatening to overwhelm him.

“He smells like fear,” the vamp on the left snickered, and the sound of his voice grated, making the hairs on Hakyeon’s arms stand on end. The other one made a puffing noise that Hakyeon supposed was laughter.

He bent into a crouch, because these weren’t the greatest odds but he could still take them down. He was utterly terrified and hopped up on adrenaline, his wards burning painfully.

The vamps didn’t mirror his stance, still standing lazily. They were looking over Hakyeon’s shoulder, and with a sinking feeling, Hakyeon rotated, just enough to see behind him. There were eyes peering at him from the darkness, three— no, four pairs of eyes. “Dammit,” he said, and it came out like a gasp. A few of the vamps chuckled. 

Hakyeon swerved to face the first two, his wards informing him the four vamps behind him were fanning out. Six. There were six altogether. His brain was running too fast, trying to think of a way out of this, but he was just going in hopeless circles. The Push at his back wasn’t helping, making coherent thought nearly impossible, crowding everything except the terror out. 

The vamp who’d spoken before was saying something, but Hakyeon heard him as if from a long way off. They still weren’t poised to fight, but they were edging closer, and Hakyeon knew he couldn’t step back. The other four vamps aside, he sensed if he delved much further into the Push he might temporarily black out, and that would be certain death.

Forward was the only way to go.

The vamp was still blathering when Hakyeon leapt at him and the other vamp by its side, and Hakyeon distantly realized the second one was a female. He barreled into the chatterbox and flailed out, grasping the female at roughly the same time. His wards went off, a really solid blast that almost hurt Hakyeon as it left him, and both vamps went down. Hakyeon fell on top of the chatterbox, letting the momentum help him to bury his dagger into the vamp’s chest. It hit its mark, the vamp not even making a sound, and Hakyeon rolled swiftly, ripping his dagger out of the body, intent on killing the female vamp while she was still down, but the other four vamps were in motion. Hakyeon knew better than to run, and in a flash he was back on his feet, resuming his crouch, dagger up.

One was on him, a redhead, grabbing at his neck, but his wards managed to get out a second blast, and the vamp made a noise, a slight exhalation, and it fell to its knees. Hakyeon staggered, feeling the loss of energy, and he would have stabbed it, but a fourth vamp grabbed his wrist, stilling the hand with the dagger. Hakyeon’s wards sizzled, but not enough, and the vamp was able to hold on. It grinned at him, fangs run out, and Hakyeon shut his wards down before they wasted any more energy. 

Hakyeon was aware of the clock ticking, the two vamps that were still stunned wouldn’t be stunned for very long, and he didn’t know what the other two vamps were doing, where they were, but they’d be on him soon. His left hand shot out, grabbing the dagger from his trapped right hand, and he attempted to stab it up, into the vamp’s ribcage. 

It was too fast for him, stepping back out of the way of his swing and using his own momentum to fling him the _wrong way_ , towards the darkness, farther into the Push. It tore along him, and Hakyeon screamed, unable to stop himself, and the grinning vamp laughed at him. It still had hold of his right wrist, and it began pulling him farther into the darkness. Hakyeon forgot all of his training, everything, forgot how to _breathe_ , and he began pulling, thrashing, trying to free himself from the vampire’s grasp, but its hold on him was like iron, and Hakyeon’s shoes scraped uselessly against the pavement as he was dragged.

“Come on, Hakyeonnie,” it trilled, “I thought you wanted to pay us a visit.” It gave an especially hard tug, and Hakyeon retched, beginning to sob, the vamp’s laughter high and horrible in his ears.

Hakyeon’s body felt weak, numb, his ears ringing, mind blanking out as he was dragged farther. He looked up, blindly, and his eyes skittered over the vamp’s face, its fangs and twisted smile, up to its eyes. Dimly, he was aware of the ward between his collarbones pulsing, the triangle. _Don’t look into their eyes_ , he remembered, but they seemed to pull him in, and the terror dimmed, replaced by a placid calm. Hakyeon fell into the feeling, vision narrowing to just the vamp’s eyes. They were blue, and that didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, couldn’t find it in himself to be concerned. The eyes were telling him to drop his knife, to let go, to surrender to this.

Hakyeon’s fingers felt nerveless, clutching onto the knife so hard they’d gone numb. It took a moment for the thought to sink into him, but then his hold loosened. 

Then the eyes were gone, no longer boring into his; the vamp was looking elsewhere, over Hakyeon’s shoulder, its grin turning into a snarl. The calm slipped away like the sea retreating after a wave, and the terror came back, nearly a physical force it was so strong, filling him up all the way to his fingertips.

Hakyeon lashed out, unthinking, and the dagger caught on the vamp’s throat, opening a wide red gash. Blood splattered across Hakyeon’s face, his neck, trickled over his hand, and the vamp let go of him with a short shriek. On a human it would have been enough to kill the damned thing, but this was a vampire, so all it did was cause it pain. Hakyeon could see the skin that had been touched by the silver was smoking, even amidst all the blood.

Hakyeon threw himself forward, he felt so weak, and used his momentum to jam the dagger up under the vamp’s ribs, sending the blade into its heart. He toppled to the pavement with the body, fumbling in his panic, and wrenched the dagger free, blood all over his hands. He rolled over, scooting away from the body, away from the endless darkness of the street, the Push seeming to help in projecting him out. He was gasping for breath, and dimly realized he was crying. His palms scraped against the concrete and he barely even felt it in his urgency to just get back to the light, his eyes unable to leave the terrible darkness, the body he’d left lying there.

Eventually he backed into a lamppost, bathing him in light, and he pulled in a breath like he’d resurfaced from water. He was back on the street he’d come down here from, and he was almost relieved, before he remembered the other vamps. The female was still down, maybe Hakyeon had zapped it harder than he thought, but it was stirring, trying to sit up, and the redhead was stumbling to its feet, snarling, but it wasn’t looking at Hakyeon. The other two were somewhere—

There was suddenly a rending noise, like metal grating, coming from behind Hakyeon, and he turned, flinching, only to see Taekwoon sparring with one of Hakyeon’s attackers. Another one was already felled on the ground, and the body— Hakyeon looked away.

Almost faster than Hakyeon could see, Taekwoon whirled, jamming something, something that glinted in the light, into the chest of the vamp he’d been sparring with. He ripped his weapon free of the other vamp’s chest, and Hakyeon could see it was his dagger, _his_ dagger, the one Taekwoon had stolen from him. A hunter’s dagger. The vampire fell to the asphalt and did not stir. 

Hakyeon found himself scooting across the sidewalk, unconsciously turning to press his back against the nearest building, the brick sturdy behind him, guarding his back, and he watched with wide eyes as the female vamp was able to regain her footing, and it and the redheaded vamp darted into the street to converge on Taekwoon. 

Hakyeon’s stomach jolted, and he shakily got to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall, intending to intervene if Taekwoon needed help. But it proved unnecessary. 

It all happened fast, far too fast. Hakyeon had never seen a vampire fighting other vampires, and Taekwoon was an Elimia, he was more than they were. 

The redhead reached Taekwoon first, the female not far behind. Taekwoon moved, it was a motion unlike anything Hakyeon had seen before, smooth and supple and almost intangibly graceful, he was one place then he was in another, flowing like water. Taekwoon turned, dodging the swipe the redhead aimed at him, grabbing onto its forearm and at the same time placing his foot on the redhead’s side, and Hakyeon didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing before Taekwoon pulled, and there was a strange gloppy noise as he ripped the redhead’s arm clean out of its shoulder socket. He used his momentum, turning, and threw the severed limb so fast that Hakyeon didn’t even see it, but it hit the female vamp in the stomach so hard she was thrown backwards, uncomfortably close to Hakyeon. It all happened in a blink. 

Hakyeon cried out as the female vamp made contact with the side of the building, feeling the bricks tremble. The sound was drowned out by the redheaded vampire, who was screaming, the sound positively inhuman, and Taekwoon slit its throat to shut it up and then buried the dagger into its chest. 

The female vamp was back on its feet. It looked at Hakyeon, then at Taekwoon, and fled down the darkened street. Taekwoon followed. Hakyeon didn’t turn to watch. He didn’t want to go near that corner again, and he was, at this point, quite certain Taekwoon could handle himself. 

There was silence, aside from Hakyeon’s heavy breathing. The Push was still there, and Hakyeon stumbled along the wall, slowly, about twenty paces, and felt better. It loomed behind him still, but after he’d been dragged so close to the damned thing, being this far felt like bliss. He was shaking, blood rushing in his ears, but a lot of it was from adrenaline. He felt _alive_.

He leaned against the wall, head tipping back to knock against the brick as he inhaled the chilly night air. He was aware of everything, every heartbeat, every bead of sweat, the adrenaline making everything sharper. The blood on his hands was sticky. 

Hakyeon sensed movement to his right, and he knew before he looked that it was Taekwoon. There was nothing on his face, no expression, and Hakyeon wondered if that was good or bad. But he figured he’d managed to down the female vamp. Taekwoon didn’t seem the type to leave loose ends. That meant six vamps dead, and Hakyeon had survived it. 

Taekwoon was moving slowly, human speed, as he walked towards Hakyeon, staying just out of the lamplight. He didn’t look ruffled at all, and it just wasn’t fair. Hakyeon felt jostled down to his bones, sweaty and bloody and panting. 

Hakyeon let his dagger fall from his slippery fingers. It clattered as it hit the pavement. He wasn’t going to bother fighting Taekwoon, not after that spectacle. Weirdly, he wasn’t afraid. Well, he was afraid, Taekwoon was terrifying, strong in ways Hakyeon was only beginning to realize, but Hakyeon didn’t think Taekwoon was here to hurt him. If he’d wanted Hakyeon dead, he’d have let the other vamps take him. But he hadn’t. 

Taekwoon stopped in front of him, and Hakyeon stared up at him, not knowing what to say. After a moment of silence Taekwoon reached out and grasped Hakyeon’s wrists, bringing his hands up, pulling them this way and that, and Hakyeon realized Taekwoon was checking him over for damage. His brow was a little furrowed.

“I’m not hurt,” Hakyeon said softly. His wards had pinged when Taekwoon touched him, attempting to repel him tiredly. Hakyeon quieted them. Taekwoon brought one of Hakyeon’s hands up to his face, staring at the blood there. Hakyeon sighed. “Not my blood.” 

“Mm,” Taekwoon murmured, and Hakyeon was getting real tired of this quiet vampire shit. That thought flew out of his mind as Taekwoon’s lips parted, a small pink tongue flicking out to lap at Hakyeon’s fingertips, and _oh_. 

Hakyeon jerked, not really out of a desire to escape, but just in surprise. Taekwoon paid him no mind, cleaning the blood off Hakyeon’s fingers. Hakyeon found himself mesmerized, watching as Taekwoon licked from his palm to the tips of his fingers, tongue disappearing back into his mouth. He paused for a moment, his breath ghosting against Hakyeon’s fingertips, before his lips parted again, and Hakyeon caught a flash of fangs, felt his knees go a bit weak, his jaw dropping open.

Taekwoon mouthed at the tips of his fingers, eyes darting to Hakyeon’s face, before he sucked Hakyeon’s first two fingers into his mouth. His tongue swirled around the digits as he sucked them clean, cheeks hollowing, and Hakyeon felt his fangs scrape against his skin lightly. Hakyeon moaned before he could stop himself. Taekwoon was back to feeling feverish, and his _mouth_ —

Taekwoon moved to his other hand. There wasn’t as much blood on that one, but he gave it the same treatment, suckling on Hakyeon’s fingers until the blood was gone. 

It felt drawn out and over too quickly at the same time. Taekwoon let his wrists go, but Hakyeon, unsure what to do with them, kept them where they were, floating in mid air. Hakyeon gurgled. 

Then Taekwoon was pressed flush against him, hands braced against the wall on either side of Hakyeon’s shoulders, as if Hakyeon was even thinking of running. The cool wall at Hakyeon’s back was a sharp contrast to the very warm vampire against his front, lined up with Hakyeon from thighs to chest, and oh god, Taekwoon was hard. All those nights wondering if vampires could— they _could_ , that was very evident. Hakyeon made a noise in his throat he was sure to be very embarrassed of tomorrow. 

Taekwoon nuzzled into his neck, licking at the blood splatters there, and yes, right, this was about the blood, not Hakyeon. Vampires liked blood. 

“This is gross,” Hakyeon mumbled as Taekwoon gave little kitten licks along his skin. In response, Taekwoon sucked at a spot on his jaw, and Hakyeon gasped, arching, hips grinding into Taekwoon’s. It sent a zing of pleasure through Hakyeon and Taekwoon _hissed_ , the sound very soft, a swift inhalation. The hairs on Hakyeon’s arms stood on end. His hands were still up, unsure where to go. He knew where they should go, knew what _should_ be happening, but Hakyeon couldn’t bring himself to push Taekwoon away.

Taekwoon nosed along his cheekbone, mouthing at the blood splatters on Hakyeon’s face, tongue flicking out occasionally. Hakyeon became aware that he was panting, lips slightly parted and eyes glazed over. He should be terrified out of his wits, but Taekwoon was so warm, felt so good, and the adrenaline was singing in his blood.

Taekwoon was lapping at Hakyeon’s cheek, soft swipes of that pretty pink tongue, and then he moved down, just a bit, licking into Hakyeon’s open mouth. “ _Ah_ ,” Hakyeon gasped before Taekwoon’s lips sealed over his. His hands moved of their own volition, clutching at Taekwoon’s back roughly. 

Taekwoon didn’t give him time to breathe, time to think, lips moving insistently, and Hakyeon went pliant underneath him, tipping his head to give Taekwoon better access. One of Taekwoon’s hands came up to tangle in Hakyeon’s hair, the other wrapped around the small of Hakyeon’s back, making him arch, holding him to Taekwoon’s body. 

Taekwoon kissed him like he was trying to take Hakyeon apart at the seams, and Hakyeon found his knees going weak, letting Taekwoon suck his tongue into his mouth. He could feel the fangs, could taste copper on Taekwoon’s tongue. Hakyeon whimpered, wanting this, wanting more. He dragged his nails down Taekwoon’s back, just to see if he could get Taekwoon to make a noise. Taekwoon twitched, just a little, and then rolled his hips into Hakyeon’s slowly, deliberately. Hakyeon moaned into his mouth.

Taekwoon pulled away, and he no longer looked unruffled. Hakyeon thought he might actually be sweating a little. His lips were slick and red, kiss swollen. Hakyeon stared at them, dazed.

“There will be others,” Taekwoon said, and while his appearance might be ruffled, his voice was steady and soft, like it always was. Hakyeon wanted to make him scream, and not in the way he usually wanted to make vampires scream. 

“What?” Hakyeon said dumbly, the word almost slurred, like he was drunk. His brain seemed to have short circuited the moment Taekwoon’s lips had touched his. 

“The nest will send others, when these ones don’t return. We need to get out of here,” Taekwoon said, staring into Hakyeon’s eyes.

The nest. Yes. Hakyeon looked to the right, at the bodies laying in the street. 

“Nrgh,” Hakyeon said, brain still not exactly back up to speed. He felt weak, trembling now for different reasons altogether. 

Maybe Taekwoon could read this, somehow, because he used the arm he had wrapped around Hakyeon’s middle to haul him up, into his arms, like Hakyeon was some kind of fucking damsel in distress. Hakyeon shrieked, partly in surprise and partly in outrage, but then they were moving, Taekwoon darting down the streets, and Hakyeon shut his eyes so he didn’t have to see everything speeding by far too quickly. 

Eventually the movement stopped, and Taekwoon made to put him down. Hakyeon had to unclench his hands from where they were clutching at Taekwoon’s shirt. He told himself quite sternly that he wasn’t going to fall over, and his legs obeyed, holding his weight when Taekwoon set him down. 

Hakyeon looked around, and saw they were in front of the drycleaning joint his flat was above. “Ah,” he said, turning back to look at Taekwoon, “you really do know where I live.”

Taekwoon’s eyebrow raised, as if to say, _Obviously_. Hakyeon blushed. He was blushing because of a vampire. Shit. 

“I am the only one who knows,” Taekwoon said softly, looking up at Hakyeon’s livingroom window. “We were not followed.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Hakyeon replied, voice a bit high, edging on hysterical. The adrenaline was fading, and without the Push on him, he was exhausted. And Taekwoon, his heavy stare, the fluid way he moved, was beginning to grate a bit, make Hakyeon nervous. He still felt a little winded from— from everything. He shifted, still half hard in his jeans, and Taekwoon tracked the movement. Hakyeon blushed harder.

He wanted Taekwoon to leave. 

He wanted Taekwoon to come closer, come inside, kiss him again. Maybe more.

Okay he _definitely_ needed Taekwoon to leave. Before he did something really stupid.

Hakyeon stared at Taekwoon, unsure what to say. Taekwoon took the issue out of his hands by stepping forward, and Hakyeon fought down the urge to step back. He cupped Hakyeon’s face and pressed a swift kiss to Hakyeon’s lips. Then he was gone. 

Hakyeon blinked. He swiveled, but the street was empty, aside from a woman far down the block walking away. His wards were finally quiet, falling silent almost with an audible flop. Poor things had had quite a night. 

He slowly made his way to the door that opened up to the staircase leading up to his flat. As he climbed the stairs, utilizing the railing heavily, he patted his pocket to check for his keys. They were still there. Really, there was no reason they should have fallen out, but somehow it seemed surreal. It was hard to connect the him that had woken up, brushed his teeth, dressed, put the keys in his pocket, with the one that had just come out of a skirmish with six vamps alive, with the him that had just been kissed senseless by another vamp.

With the him that would have fucked said vamp if the vamp hadn’t stopped kissing him.

Hakyeon sat down heavily on the top step, putting his head between his knees, breathing slowly and deeply. 

What was he doing, what was he _thinking_. He’d fallen down this rabbit hole so fast he didn’t know what to do, and he couldn't even see the light anymore. 

He looked at his hands. He could still feel Taekwoon’s lips on his fingers, still taste him on his tongue. He didn’t know how to wash this off.

He licked his lips. Maybe he didn’t want to.

Hakyeon got to his feet, unlocked his door, and went inside.

——

A commotion woke Hakyeon from deep sleep, making him sit bolt upright so quickly his neck cricked. Hakyeon’s tired brain skipped ahead of him, back to the night before— the nest— they’d found him—

It was daylight, he dimly registered, willing his racing heart to slow a bit. He heard his front door slam open, and he was trying to untangle himself from the sheets and blankets he was twisted up in when a deep voice began shouting, drowning out the sound of stomping feet.

“Happy?” Wonshik yelled, bursting into Hakyeon’s bedroom, “I fucking knocked.” He looked ready to commit murder. 

Hakyeon put his hands over his chest, feeling his heart pound. He’d been ripped from sleep too quickly and now he felt slightly ill. He looked to his alarm clock, and— too early, it was too early. “What the fuck?” Hakyeon asked. It was the only thing that came to mind.

Wonshik ignored him. “What did you do?” he snarled, and Hakyeon’s slowing heart picked up again, images of the previous night flashing across his eyes. The vamps— Taekwoon—

When he’d come home last night he’d stripped, shoving his ripped and bloody clothes into the hamper, and then he’d taken an extra few minutes to wash the blood smears Taekwoon had missed off his skin. He’d brushed his teeth too, but that had done little to erase the feeling of Taekwoon’s mouth on his.

Now, though, he was glad he’d done those things. This was going to be hard enough to weasel out of as it was. He’d realized, before he’d collapsed into bed, that he’d left his damn dagger at the scene. It didn’t have his name on it or anything, and most of his colleagues wouldn’t recognize it as his, but still.

Hakyeon finished detangling himself from his bedding with a huff, and then he looked up at Wonshik quizzically, like he had no possible idea what Wonshik was talking about. Wonshik scowled harder and brandished— a newspaper, a real fucking newspaper at him. “Who reads papers anymore,” Hakyeon grumbled, but he snatched it out of Wonshik’s hands anyway, because he was flailing it too much to read anything.

Wonshik huffed a breath out through his nose, making his nostrils flare. “I picked it up from a stand on the way here. It’s everywhere.”

Hakyeon looked down at the front page, frightened of what he was going to see. The headline read SIX VAMPIRES FOUND DEAD IN EAST END. Hakyeon’s breath hitched, swallowing heavily. He skimmed the article, but there was no mention of him or his dagger or— or his troublesome rescuer. He blinked up at Wonshik. “I didn’t do this?” he said slowly, trying to look as innocent as possible without overdoing it. It was half true. 

“Oh,” Wonshik said, voice going a little high, “yeah, I mean, why would I think it had something to do with you, it’s not like you are researching the nest in the east end or anything, and it’s not like you’re stupid enough to go out there by yourself—” Hakyeon scowled at that, but Wonshik kept on, “but no, of course, it wasn’t you, what was I think— is that a hickey?” The sudden change of subject made Hakyeon blink. Wonshik was staring— somewhere— at Hakyeon’s neck— _shit_ —

Hakyeon slapped his hand over the side of his neck, at the place Taekwoon had been sucking sweetly at the night before. A blush crept up his neck, over his face. “Uhm,” he squeaked out, at a loss for words. That didn’t happen often. 

Wonshik pointed at where Hakyeon’s hand was covering the offending mark. “That’s a hickey!” he shouted. Then he paused. “That wasn’t there, a few days ago.”

“Uhm,” Hakyeon stammered, then realized he needed to say something coherent. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Oh my god,” Wonshik wheezed. “I thought you were out last night, going on a crazy killing spree, but you were—”

“Don’t,” Hakyeon mumbled, turning red as a beet. Normally he had no problem sharing about these things (or oversharing, Wonshik claimed) but this— with Taekwoon— Hakyeon covered his face in embarrassment for reasons he could never explain to Wonshik.

“Did you get his number?” Wonshik asked, a teasing note to his voice. Hakyeon could only groan. There was the crinkling sound of Wonshik picking the paper back up, and Hakyeon tentatively looked up at him. “Well, if you were out finally getting laid last night, I guess we’re back to square one on this.”

“What do we know?” Hakyeon asked, sobering up. His blush faded some, and he fanned himself.

“Six vamps found dead in the heart of the east end, one kinda mutilated, all killed with silver blades to the heart from the looks of it,” Wonshik huffed. 

“Have they found anything else?” Hakyeon ventured. “Anything about the bodies or— or on the scene?”

Wonshik shook his head. “Not that we know of. VCF is handling the case officially, of course, but we’re getting fed information quickly from the Dragon.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you think I’m here at the asscrack of dawn? I’m not the only one who thinks you had something to do with this, you know.”

It wasn't really the asscrack of dawn, but that was beside the point. Hakyeon’s stomach sank. “The Dragon?”

“Well, pretty much everyone at HQ, er, suspects,” Wonshik said. “But I mean, it’s a bit ridiculous, when you think about it. One hunter, taking out six vamps at once.” He sounded a little sheepish now.

“Uhm, yeah,” Hakyeon said slowly. “I’m good but I’m not that good.”

Wonshik rubbed the back of his head with his hand, and Hakyeon fought not to sigh in relief. “The Dragon doesn’t think you did it per se. If he did, he’s the one who would’ve come breaking down your door. But he does want to see you. He wants you to tell him what you’ve concluded about the nest’s location.”

“Tonight?” Hakyeon asked, not bothering to hide the dread in his voice. Kris inspired that sort of feeling.

Wonshik shook his head. “No. He told us flat out he’s going to be with VCF today, tonight, and a lot of tomorrow as well. They’re going to be going over the scene with a fine tooth comb, and then dissecting the vamp’s bodies. He’s going to be working with a few others to funnel us info as it comes in, so we can analyze it as well. He wants this figured out.”

“So I guess we should head over to HQ then,” Hakyeon said numbly. Now that his heart wasn’t pounding like it was trying to escape, the exhaustion was creeping back. He didn’t want to deal with this. He wanted to pretend none of this, none of the last few months, hell, the last year, had happened. Shit had gotten too complicated. He wanted to wake up to shitty coffee courtesy of Hongbin, to spar with Wonshik and see him laugh with light in his eyes—

“No,” Wonshik was saying, and Hakyeon shook himself. 

Hakyeon was in the now, whether he liked it or not, and the last year had happened. He just had to deal with that. Deal with Hongbin being gone, a bratty (but endearing) protege, a Wonshik that had been glued together at the seams. A vampire that he’d kissed. 

“I’m heading back to HQ,” Wonshik said, pointing a thumb at himself. “You’re staying here, on the Dragon’s orders. You’ve been instructed to work your ass off on that map and then hand your findings in tomorrow night.”

Hakyeon took a minute to process that. “So, the night after tonight.”

Wonshik side eyed him. “Yes, Hakyeon, do I need to repeat it again?”

“I had a busy night, okay,” Hakyeon grumbled, then his heart skipped a beat, but Wonshik was laughing, jumping to his own conclusions. 

Wonshik left after that, but not before teasing Hakyeon a little more about the hickey. It was jarringly silent, once Wonshik was gone.

Hakyeon eyed the clock. Tomorrow night, he thought slowly. Tomorrow night.

He flopped backwards onto his bed, drawing the blankets up, and went back to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

There wasn’t a lot of daylight left by the time Hakyeon woke up again, but he’d needed that sleep. His body hadn’t even woken him with dreams or nightmares, and for that he could only be thankful.

He shuffled to his bathroom, squinting in the bright artificial light. Once his eyes adjusted he took a deep breath, bracing himself, and looked in the mirror. He tipped his head slightly, looking at his neck, where there was a very faint red mark.

Hakyeon gripped the edge of his sink harshly, taking deep, slow breaths. A vampire’s mouth had been there, had sucked that mark into his skin. It made Hakyeon’s heart pound, adrenaline pumping with the memory. It made his body respond in other ways, ways it most certainly shouldn’t respond to the memory of a vampire.

Hakyeon groaned, stripping so he could shower. He turned it on icy cold as penance, and by the time he got out, he felt cleansed, somewhat at least. He even brushed his teeth twice for good measure.

He ate some cereal, stealing glances at his map. After this was all over, he’d go grocery shopping, he’d make muffins in the warm sunlight of the afternoon. As it was now, it was too late, the sky streaked gold and pink. But in a few days he could, it would all blow over, and everything would go back to normal. Hopefully. 

For a brief second Hakyeon considered drowning himself in his cereal milk, but the moment passed.

He tossed his bowl in the sink (plastic, cheap), and went over to his map and corkboard, leaning up against the living room wall. He picked up a red pin and stuck it where the attack had happened the night before. 

There was nothing more to do after that, nothing but to sit and stare and hope some kind of revelation came to him. He’d narrowed it down a lot, but there were still several blocks to cover, hundreds of buildings and businesses. The nest was somewhere, somewhere in this red spot by the canal, but Hakyeon didn’t know exactly _where_.

His wards were restless, and at first he thought it was because of his train of thought, but they just got more and more antsy, some of them warming and tingling. The amulet around his neck began to hum, the feeling almost comforting, while the sun on his back was decidedly prickly. 

Hakyeon’s heart sped up as the feeling of _vampire_ got more intense, as his wards began to burn. If the nest had found him he’d be in trouble. They wouldn’t be able to get in, but they could throw any manner of things in through Hakyeon’s windows to drive him out. It didn’t happen often, but once this prominent VCF officer was at home with his family when several molotov cocktails came flying through his windows, forcing him and his family outside. It hadn’t been pretty. 

Hakyeon crawled slowly to his window, reaching to his ankle to pull out his dagger, before he remembered he didn’t have one anymore. “Crap,” he mumbled. He sat up on his knees, very slightly pulling the blinds apart so he could peer out. His heart skipped a beat, and then he cursed, sighing in relief. 

He fumbled for the cords of his blinds, giving them a yank so the blinds pulled up and locked. Dust floated down, making him cough; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened them fully. Nor could he remember the last time he’d cracked his window. It unlatched fine, but prying it open took several moments of heaving.

He braced his hands on the sill, poking his head outside. It was chilly out, the stars bright. Taekwoon looked up at him, standing under a streetlamp, bold as brass. It was still strange, how he looked so human, but somehow so different. He was wearing a fucking sweater, in cool hues, but no turtleneck could cover up what he was. 

_Taekwoon, Taekwoon, whythefuck art thou here, Taekwoon_ , Hakyeon thought. He was half annoyed, half aroused. With a little dash of fear. These were coming to be his general Taekwoon Emotions.

“You’re creepy,” Hakyeon called down softly. He knew Taekwoon would be able to hear him, but he didn’t want his neighbors to. “And don’t stand there in plain sight,” he added, motioning for Taekwoon to step closer to the building, away from the lights. “Someone is going to see you, and I don’t want to be associated with you.”

Taekwoon didn’t listen. Though, Hakyeon was pleased to note, he’d begun scowling a little. It was almost a pout. Hakyeon fought down the urge to coo at him. 

“There are things we need to discuss,” Taekwoon called up, speaking more loudly than Hakyeon had ever heard him speak before. His voice still had that high softness to it. Hakyeon bit his bottom lip.

He had three options here. Option one, they could have this conversation through the window. Aside from the shitty theater parallels, it ran the very high risk of Taekwoon being seen. Too obvious. Option two, was for Hakyeon to go out to him, pull him into the dark, talk that way. Still rather obvious, and that put Hakyeon in danger. Option three, invite Taekwoon in. He’d still be in danger, but he’d be able to rescind Taekwoon’s invitation, if he felt it necessary. And it got the vampire off the street.

Or Hakyeon could slam his window shut and ignore the whole situation, but he’d realized by now that trying to ignore Taekwoon in any capacity was damn near impossible. He’d probably just stand there for hours anyway.

Hakyeon’s fingers tapped on the sill. What if Taekwoon turned on him, hurt him? Oh god, what if he _didn’t_? 

Hakyeon had been thinking about that kiss a lot. 

“Fine,” Hakyeon burst out. “Fine, you can come in, but—”

Taekwoon was already on the windowsill, landing lightly. Hakyeon didn’t even see him move. Hakyeon fell back, landing on his butt on the floor, as Taekwoon stepped in silently. Then he was on top of Hakyeon, straddling his waist and pushing him down the rest of the way, his hands coming up to tangle in Hakyeon’s hair as he kissed him. It all happened faster than Hakyeon could process. 

Hakyeon gasped, the sound muffled in Taekwoon’s mouth, and Taekwoon— he hummed, just a little noise, a satisfied noise. He sucked on Hakyeon’s lower lip, running his tongue against it, and Hakyeon moaned, arching up. 

“Wait,” Hakyeon said, turning his face away. The way Taekwoon smelled, the way he tasted— it was already going to Hakyeon’s head, and the unmistakable feeling of vampire was making his body thrum, heart pumping adrenaline through him. His wards were warm, tingly, but they hadn’t gone off, like they’d known Taekwoon’s intent somehow. “I thought— you said you had things to discuss.”

“I don’t,” Taekwoon murmured, blinking down at him, eyes glittering in the low light. 

Hakyeon felt his heart flutter, chest hitching, and it was on the tip of his tongue to kick Taekwoon out. This was bad, this was trouble, he should not be doing this. It was wrong on so many levels. 

Taekwoon was staring at his lips. 

“Why are you here?” Hakyeon whispered, eyes wide as he looked up, into Taekwoon’s eyes. 

_Don’t look into their eyes_ , Hakyeon remembered. 

“I like kissing you,” Taekwoon replied, softly, eyes darting away like he was— embarrassed? Oh fuck. 

Hakyeon made a noise somewhere between a moan and a sob, because he just didn’t understand this, he didn’t—

He grabbed Taekwoon’s face in his hands and kissed him, lips parting on contact so he could flick his tongue out, over Taekwoon’s lips. Taekwoon growled, hands tightening in Hakyeon’s hair, and he nipped lightly at Hakyeon’s tongue, blunt teeth scraping sweetly. Hakyeon’s stomach jolted and his wards flared, sending a small shock through him. Taekwoon made a little noise of pleasure.

“They tickle,” he said in explanation, breathing into Hakyeon’s mouth. A pause. “I like it.” He bit lightly at Hakyeon’s lower lip, just to incite another little shock. 

“Again,” Hakyeon panted, a demand. 

Taekwoon did so, a bit sharper this time, not drawing blood but enough to make Hakyeon gasp. Then he moved down, mouthing along Hakyeon’s jaw, nuzzling into his neck. He shifted, no longer straddling Hakyeon’s waist, instead moving to kneel between Hakyeon’s legs. Hakyeon’s legs fell open easily, he was so easy for Taekwoon, and he might have taken a moment to be mortified by it but Taekwoon was nipping at his neck, over his pulse point, and every nerve in his body was screaming at him, his heartrate kicking up a notch. 

The eerie feeling of fangs brushing against his neck, like needles dragging over his skin, made Hakyeon cry out, body arching, and Taekwoon made a noise that was lost as he darted up to kiss Hakyeon again, open mouthed and rough, insistent. Hakyeon let him take and take, mouth falling open. Easy. 

Their hips were aligned in a way that made it very hard for Hakyeon to think, and Taekwoon felt so sturdy between his legs. Hakyeon wrapped his legs loosely about Taekwoon’s waist, bringing their bodies closer. 

Hakyeon felt like Taekwoon was kissing the very breath out of his lungs, barely giving him a chance to do more than lie there and take it, let Taekwoon have what he wanted, what he’d come for. He was so aroused he was aching, and Taekwoon must be as well, but he didn’t show it. He was so quiet, while Hakyeon was making the most pathetic little noises, whimpering into Taekwoon’s mouth. 

Hakyeon reached down, hands fluttering against Taekwoon’s sides, and grabbed the edges of Taekwoon’s sweater, pulling it up. Taekwoon’s skin was hot, smooth, and a little damp. He managed to get the sweater bunched to just below Taekwoon’s shoulders, before it got caught. He kept pulling anyway, wanting more skin.

Taekwoon stopped kissing him, pulling back enough so that he could yank the sweater off over his head. The motion was fast, fluid, and it made a spike of panic course through Hakyeon, his instincts flaring up. _Vampire_.

Taekwoon tossed the sweater away, and it landed amongst more of Hakyeon’s notes, making the papers flutter. His hair was sticking up in odd places. The panic passed. 

“Oh,” Hakyeon whimpered. Taekwoon was lovely, inhuman, but lovely. He was just a bit taller than Hakyeon, but he was considerably broader, sturdier, muscles more toned. He looked like he could hold Hakyeon up against a wall while he— but of course he could, regardless of body type, because _vampire_ , but that seemed beside the point. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Hakyeon said softly, face heating up. He was so royally fucked. Taekwoon didn’t say anything, but his eyes had gone really intense, more intense than before, and Hakyeon’s cock twitched. Shit. “Are we going to have sex?” he asked, embarrassed.

This was a bad idea, an awful idea. It was illegal, but more than that, it was just wrong. Humans didn’t fuck vampires, it was Rule Number Two (Rule Number One was that you didn’t let them bite you, duh). Somehow the fact that he shouldn’t be doing this made Hakyeon want it more. His body was positively thrumming, and he was trembling so hard his teeth were nearly chattering. 

Hakyeon was nervous, so many thoughts pinging around in his brain, and he began to babble. “I mean, I know it’s probably a bad idea and you’re— what you are— but you haven’t killed me yet and I figure that’s a good sign—” He broke off, somewhat indignantly, as Taekwoon had just yanked his shirt over his head, the cotton catching on his lip for a moment. He spluttered, and might have said something more, but then Taekwoon was leaning down, pressing their bare chests together, and Hakyeon’s brain short circuited. 

That was a lot of skin. Too much. Not enough. Taekwoon was so fucking warm, and once he was settled over Hakyeon’s body again he resumed kissing him, hands going back into Hakyeon’s hair. Hakyeon arched up, trying to get as much skin contact as possible, clutching at Taekwoon’s back, maybe a little too hard. His wards were sparking, Hakyeon couldn’t think of any other word for it. He felt like he might explode. There was sweat collecting in the hollow of his collarbones, along his hairline. So much energy was crackling through him he almost felt like there should be flames flickering on his fingertips.

Taekwoon pulled away, moving down, renewing the hickey he’d sucked into Hakyeon’s neck the night before. Hakyeon inhaled the cool night air gratefully.

“Why are you so warm?” he asked, feeling winded. He was sweating all over the case notes. He didn’t care.

“Does it bother you?” Taekwoon asked quietly, the air puffing against Hakyeon’s damp skin.

“No,” Hakyeon gasped, shaking his head for emphasis. “It’s just, the first time you were so cold—”

“I thought you’d like it if I was warmer,” Taekwoon said simply. He mouthed down Hakyeon’s neck, lapping at the sweat along his collarbones, and Hakyeon made a broken little sound.

He’d heard of vamps being able to control a lot of things about their bodies, including temperature. It was a bit of a head trip to see it happen and— Taekwoon had done it _for_ him? Because he thought he’d like it.

“Oh,” Hakyeon whimpered. "So, you want this, then?" He wasn’t sure why he wanted confirmation so badly, especially not when he could feel Taekwoon’s stiff cock pressing against his own even through the jeans he was wearing, but he did.

"Mm," Taekwoon murmured, nosing down along Hakyeon's sternum, lips brushing along Hakyeon's tattoos, the triangle and then the owl eyes.

"I just— no one really knows, you know, if vampires have sex— if vampires want sex— and I just—" he broke off with a cry, because Taekwoon had dipped lower to suck at Hakyeon's nipple. " _Shit_."

"I want this," Taekwoon whispered against his skin. He shifted upwards, so his face was again level with Hakyeon's. "I want you."

Hakyeon felt like all the breath had been knocked out of him. Taekwoon’s gaze was so intense, so focused, like everything in this moment revolved around Hakyeon. “I want you, too,” he mumbled, blushing. The admission felt like the final slamming of a door, and yet somehow also like the breaking of chains, like damnation and deliverance at once. 

“Mm,” Taekwoon hummed, and went back to nosing along Hakyeon’s body. He paused a moment to suck lightly at the nipple he’d neglected, and Hakyeon squeaked, but then he was moving down, down—

Hakyeon squirmed as Taekwoon’s lips brushed over his navel. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. Putting them in Taekwoon’s hair seemed dangerous. In the end he settled for placing them carefully on Taekwoon’s shoulders, nails scratching lightly. Taekwoon kept going, following the light trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of Hakyeon’s sweatpants. 

Hakyeon’s wards started going haywire again when Taekwoon began sliding his sweatpants down. He was taking Hakyeon’s underwear along with them, and Hakyeon’s head thunked back to the carpet, hearing some papers crunch under his hair. He screwed his eyes shut, focused on breathing, on calming his wards, his heart rate—

The air was cold against his cock. He was hard, embarrassingly, fully hard, his cock flushed and curving upwards towards his stomach. His sweatpants and underwear were around his thighs, and Takewoon left them there, instead grasping at Hakyeon’s hips, his thumbs running over the bone. 

Taekwoon rested his forehead against Hakyeon’s stomach, hunching over a bit. He was breathing, a little heavily, actually, Hakyeon could feel the warm puffs of air on very sensitive skin, and that was a bit odd. A vampire panting. 

Hakyeon wasn’t sure what was happening. He was digging his nails a little too hard into Taekwoon’s shoulders. He’d been thinking, earlier, about having Taekwoon’s hot mouth on his cock, but those fangs were daunting, to say the least, and Hakyeon rather got the impression that they weren’t fully under voluntary control.

In the end Taekwoon ducked down, the movement slow, but Hakyeon still jerked like he’d been shocked. Taekwoon mouthed at the head of his cock, gently kissing the tip. He didn’t try to take him into his mouth, and Hakyeon was, somewhat, relieved. He licked at the slit, then paused, for several beats, then licked at it again. Hakyeon realized he was licking the precome off. 

He was sure by now he’d broken the skin of Taekwoon’s shoulders with his nails.

 _Vampire_ , his wards squeaked weakly as Taekwoon swirled his tongue around the head of Hakyeon’s cock, suckling very carefully. He hadn’t been expecting— this. He’d hadn’t thought Taekwoon would go slowly, or be so gentle. Taekwoon kissed like he was drowning, and there was none of that urgency here.

Hakyeon’s chest heaved, body strung so taut he felt likely to snap. “I don’t have all night,” he said, and he’d wanted to sound demanding but he just sounded wrecked. 

“Yes, you do,” Taekwoon replied. He was still dropping little kitten licks on the head of Hakyeon’s cock. 

Hakyeon huffed. “Alright, well, I can’t do this all night, I might have a heart attack.” Or his wards might self destruct. He wondered if that would just tickle Taekwoon too. “I want more,” he mumbled, pulling at Taekwoon’s shoulders. 

Taekwoon raised his head, meeting Hakyeon’s eyes, and then went unnervingly still. Predator. Danger. _Vampire_.

Hakyeon wanted him so badly.

“I have lube and condoms,” he whispered. Taekwoon blinked, slowly, but otherwise remained immobile. “If you, you know, wanted to do that.”

Taekwoon slid back up, like ink in water. He didn’t break eye contact, and it reminded Hakyeon of that time in the alleyway, when he’d settled back over Hakyeon’s body, whispered in his ear, _Did you want more?_

“I want more,” Hakyeon repeated, like he was finally answering Taekwoon’s question. “I want you.”

“Yes,” Taekwoon breathed, and then he was kissing Hakyeon again. It only lasted a few moments, but it was enough to send Hakyeon’s head spinning anew.

Taekwoon broke away, and Hakyeon knew, somehow, what he wanted. “It’s in the drawer of my nightstand in my bed—” He didn’t get to finish the sentence before Taekwoon was gone. Hakyeon had just enough time to feel cold, as well as embarrassed, lying on the floor with his pants half off and his dick hard. Maybe they should move this somewhere else—

Taekwoon was back, settling between Hakyeon’s legs like he’d never left. Hakyeon caught a flash of his bare feet though, saw he’d taken his shoes off. Taekwoon held up a little bottle in his hands for Hakyeon’s inspection. It was the right little bottle, and Hakyeon nodded. Taekwoon seemed pleased. Hakyeon wasn’t sure how he knew this, Taekwoon’s expression didn’t change, but he sensed it, somehow.

“No condoms?” Hakyeon asked, and the edges of Taekwoon’s lips twitched, just a little. “Don’t laugh at me!” he cried, even though Taekwoon wasn’t even really smiling, let alone laughing. “I guess we, er, don’t need them?” he ventured.

Taekwoon shook his head, popping the cap of the bottle open, and Hakyeon figured that was all he was getting out of him. He began squirming, trying to get his sweatpants and underwear off even with Taekwoon between his legs. 

“Vampires cannot carry diseases the way humans can,” Taekwoon said softly, and Hakyeon stopped moving to listen to him. Taekwoon pulled back and helpfully yanked Hakyeon’s sweatpants off, taking his underwear too, leaving him nude. Hakyeon shivered for more reasons than just the temperature, but Taekwoon settled near him again quickly, like a personal furnace. “And I am fairly sure there’s no danger of pregnancy here.”

“Definitely not,” Hakyeon squawked, and Taekwoon surprised him by laughing. He turned his face away when he did so, like he was self conscious, and it was a very soft laugh, but it was a laugh nonetheless. It did weird things to Hakyeon. 

Hakyeon had enough time to think that maybe, he was in farther over his head than he’d thought, before the smile was gone off Taekwoon’s face and he was moving. Then Hakyeon couldn’t think anymore, because Taekwoon had stood quickly, and then his jeans were being kicked off roughly. He wasn’t wearing underwear. Taekwoon’s cock was— oh. He was just as hard as Hakyeon was, his cock flushed and slick at the tip, and that soothed Hakyeon some. Hakyeon’s mouth dropped open unconsciously, wanting to taste, before that thought flew from his mind because _vampire_.

Then Taekwoon was back to kneeling between his legs, fiddling with the lube bottle, and his hand dropped between Hakyeon’s legs. Hakyeon made a noise he could only liken to a gurgle, spreading his legs a bit more to give Taekwoon better access. 

Taekwoon’s fingers were cold with lube when they pressed against him, and Hakyeon twitched. Taekwoon looked at him questioningly, eyes unblinking.

“You can,” Hakyeon said, and again, Hakyeon was expecting roughness, but Taekwoon pressed only one finger into him at first, slowly. It wasn’t even a stretch. “I’m not a virgin,” Hakyeon grumbled. “You can go faster.” 

Taekwoon ignored him, carefully working his finger in and out. He was so focused, it made Hakyeon fidgety, self conscious in ways he hadn’t been since he was a teen. Not to mention the fact that this slowness was giving him time to think about— everything. The situation. He really didn’t need to think about it, or how much of a bad idea it all was. How far down the rabbit hole he’d fallen.

“Please,” Hakyeon bit out. His heartbeat was picking up again, and not just from arousal. 

Maybe Taekwoon sensed it, maybe he heard his heart pounding anew, because he listened, slipping a second finger in beside the first and scissoring them immediately. Hakyeon gasped out, “Yes,” and then Taekwoon was pressing a third finger into him, thrusting them carefully. Hakyeon got the feeling Taekwoon was watching his face closely for reactions, but Hakyeon had to screw his eyes shut, Taekwoon’s gaze too much for him. His chest heaved, his hips pushing down on Taekwoon’s fingers rhythmically, his own pace faster than Taekwoon’s. He seemed determined to go slow.

There was the sound of movement, and then Taekwoon was settling over Hakyeon’s body, making Hakyeon’s eyes snap open. Taekwoon braced himself on an elbow placed on the floor, that hand moving to brush Hakyeon’s sweaty hair out of his face and the other hand still between Hakyeon’s legs, fingers pumping gently. 

“Ah,” Hakyeon gasped, arching so their chests touched. His heart felt likely to beat out of his chest. He wondered if Taekwoon could feel it. 

His hands moved to clutch at Taekwoon’s back roughly, and he tipped his head back, putting the long line of his throat very near Taekwoon’s mouth. Taekwoon didn’t dip down to nip at him, like Hakyeon had hoped. He wanted Taekwoon’s teeth on him again, wanted the little zing it made run through his body. 

He didn’t want to examine that urge too closely.

Instead, Taekwoon crooked his fingers inside Hakyeon, and Hakyeon’s nails raked down his back sharply as he cried out, far harsher than he’d do with a human lover, his eyes shutting again. Taekwoon moaned, and the sound went right to Hakyeon’s cock. Then Taekwoon’s fingers were gone.

“Look at me,” Taekwoon ordered softly, the air fanning over Hakyeon’s face. 

Hakyeon blinked his eyes open dazedly, meeting Taekwoon’s eyes. He was already flushed, but the way Taekwoon was looking at him made him turn even redder. His only consolation was that Taekwoon looked pretty wrecked, hair sticking to his face, lips kiss swollen. Hakyeon had done this to him, in a way. He licked his lower lip and Taekwoon’s eyes darkened.

The hand Taekwoon had between Hakyeon’s legs was moving, and then the tip of Taekwoon’s cock was pressing against his entrance. For a moment, Hakyeon forgot to breath, unable to look away from Taekwoon’s eyes as Taekwoon rolled his hips forward slowly, fucking into Hakyeon in one smooth stroke. 

It was a stretch, a nice stretch, and Hakyeon inhaled shakily, revelling in the feeling. Taekwoon’s eyes had dropped down to Hakyeon’s mouth, his parted lips, and Hakyeon let his own eyes flutter shut. Taekwoon’s free hand came up to cradle the side of Hakyeon’s face, his other hand, the one connected to the elbow he was using to brace himself over Hakyeon’s body, was still carding through his hair.

Taekwoon dipped down, pressing feather light kisses over Hakyeon’s eyelids, and Hakyeon whimpered. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” Hakyeon admitted softly. 

“Mm,” Taekwoon murmured, and Hakyeon knew it was a question.

“I thought you’d be rougher,” Hakyeon whispered. 

Taekwoon went still, just for a beat, and Hakyeon’s heart sped up all over again. “I like it this way,” he mumbled, and it almost sounded defensive. He kissed at the corner of Hakyeon’s mouth, and Hakyeon tilted his head, kissing Taekwoon tentatively at first, then harder, mouth falling open on a moan as Taekwoon began to move. 

He was infuriatingly controlled, thrusts paced and even, too slow to get Hakyeon off but too fast to wind him down, either. It felt good, too good, not good enough. The friction of Taekwoon’s cock inside him was exquisite, but Hakyeon didn’t know how long he could do this for before he lost his mind. Taekwoon evidently had stamina he did not. Hakyeon’s cock was aching, dripping precome onto his belly. This was _torture_.

“I can’t,” Hakyeon sobbed, and Taekwoon stilled, which was the last fucking thing Hakyeon wanted. “I need— more, please.” He wrapped his legs around Taekwoon’s waist, locking his ankles together, trying to get some leverage. His hands were still holding desperately onto Taekwoon’s back, despite the fact that the skin was slick with sweat. Hakyeon rolled his hips down, and Taekwoon hissed, so Hakyeon did it again, and again, picking up his pace, until suddenly Taekwoon was moving again, meeting Hakyeon thrust for thrust. 

Hakyeon moaned, abs tightening, toes curling. “Touch me,” he begged, and Taekwoon’s hand moved from cupping Hakyeon’s face, sliding down Hakyeon’s slick chest so he could grasp at Hakyeon’s cock. He smeared the precome at the tip down the shaft, then began jerking Hakyeon off at the same pace his hips were snapping forward. His thrusts were speeding up, but they were still paced, while Hakyeon was squirming desperately, all rhythm lost. He gave a broken little sob. “I need— I— please, Taekwoon—”

“Ah,” Taekwoon gasped, his hips stuttering for the first time, and he leaned down, biting at the side of Hakyeon’s neck lightly. He didn’t break the skin, but the sharp shock of fangs against his skin pushed Hakyeon over the edge with a cry of Taekwoon’s name. He clutched Taekwoon to himself as he shuddered through his orgasm, burying his face against Taekwoon’s shoulder.

Taekwoon had stilled, except for his hand, which was very carefully pumping Hakyeon through his orgasm, drawing it out. Hakyeon made a noise, it sounded kind of like, “Nrgh,” and then flopped back down to the floor, utterly spent. 

Taekwoon nosed at the dents his teeth had made in Hakyeon’s skin, before pressing his lips to them. Then he was kissing Hakyeon again, very softly, lips closed.

“Did you come?” Hakyeon asked against his lips. He paused. “Can you, er, come?”

“Mm,” Taekwoon said. “I can. But I haven’t.” He pulled back to look down at Hakyeon, face curious. “Would you like me to?”

Hakyeon blinked, too tired for this weird vampire shit. “Uh, well, fair’s fair, right?” He tilted his hips a bit, showing the come smeared across his own stomach.

“That isn’t what I asked,” Taekwoon said softly, eyes strangely lucid. 

Hakyeon blushed. “Yes,” he mumbled, “I’d like you to come. Preferably—” he took a shuddery breath, “preferably inside me.” He looked away from Taekwoon’s face as he said the last part.

“Roll over,” Taekwoon said, and there was a quality to his voice Hakyeon hadn’t heard before, something silky, dangerous. Hakyeon’s heart, which had slowed, sped up again, and the languid post-orgasm feeling in his limbs shrank under his wards tingling anew

Hakyeon struggled up onto his elbows, scooting out from under Taekwoon. He gasped, just a little, when Taekwoon’s cock slipped out of him, but then he was turning over, lying belly down on the floor. More notes scattered underneath him, and Hakyeon impatiently swept them to the side. Then Taekwoon was on top of him, his front to Hakyeon’s back, and oh, that was a lot of skin. His elbows came to rest on the floor on either side of Hakyeon’s shoulders, so Hakyeon could still breath, and his legs pushed Hakyeon’s apart. The sun tattoo on Hakyeon’s back was burning. 

Hakyeon’s poor heart was fluttering all over again, but his cock, trapped beneath his belly and the floor, was hardening up again. Hakyeon took a moment to be slightly miffed, but Taekwoon was shifting, and then he was pushing inside Hakyeon again. “Fuck,” Hakyeon bit out, forehead thunking down to the floor. He was so sensitive, almost sore. 

Taekwoon set a fast pace, not drawing it out this time. He still wasn’t being rough though, and he nipped at Hakyeon’s ear, the back of his neck, lapping up the sweat there before nosing down Hakyeon’s spine. Hakyeon clenched around his cock right as Taekwoon pressed his forehead against the sun tattoo on Hakyeon’s back, and it send a wave of energy sizzling through Hakyeon. Taekwoon made a choked little noise that melted into a soft, sweet moan, and Hakyeon’s cock twitched against his belly at the sound, and then Taekwoon had stilled inside him, breathing heavily against Hakyeon’s spine.

Hakyeon moved his hips a little, trying to draw Taekwoon’s orgasm out, feeling his cock twitch inside him. Well. Vampires could have sex. And they could orgasm. Duly noted.

Taekwoon pulled out of him, and Hakyeon let himself plop limply on the floor, his cheek sticking to a folder. 

“I’m hard again,” he whined. Taekwoon’s hands stilled where they’d been tracing lightly over Hakyeon’s sun tattoo, tormenting the poor thing. Then he was rolling Hakyeon over. “I can’t do it again, I’ll die,” he said, because Taekwoon had a glint in his eyes.

Taekwoon grabbed Hakyeon’s hips and then he was licking a stripe up the underside of Hakyeon’s cock, and Hakyeon shouted, body arching, skin overly sensitive. “I can’t,” he said, “I can’t, I can’t—”

He came again a few minutes later, Taekwoon’s hand pumping around the shaft of his cock, his lips wrapped around the head, mindful of the fangs, sucking hard. Hakyeon, watched, dazedly, as he swallowed. It made his cock twitch slightly, and Taekwoon looked up at him, smug. 

“Kiss me?” Hakyeon asked, and the smug look faded from Taekwoon’s face, to be replaced with an emotion Hakyeon couldn’t decipher.

Taekwoon slid up — fluid, graceful, _vampire_ — and obligingly kissed him.


	6. Chapter 6

Hakyeon stepped out of the bathroom, sweatpants slung low on his hips, towel draped over his hair. Steam wafted out of the door behind him, smelling obnoxiously like bubblegum. 

Taekwoon was right where Hakyeon had left him, sitting cross-legged amongst the scattered notes on the living room floor, staring at the brightly colored map of the city on the corkboard. 

“You can use my shower, if you want,” Hakyeon said tentatively. His brain felt sluggish, foggy. While in the shower, soaping himself up with candy scented wash, he’d been able to half convince himself he’d hallucinated everything. But Taekwoon was still here, sending Hakyeon’s heart fluttering all over again, so, it really had happened. 

Hakyeon didn’t know what to do now. Maybe this was where Taekwoon finally turned on him. Maybe this was where Hakyeon should turn on him first.

Taekwoon didn’t respond to his offer. Instead he said, “You’ve been looking for the nest in the east end.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well, yeah,” Hakyeon replied, going to stand near Taekwoon so they both were looking at the map. “I’m a hunter, remember?”

“Mm,” Taekwoon grunted. He didn’t look at Hakyeon.

“And I mean, you already knew I was looking for it anyway, because you’ve been following me.” Hakyeon let that accusation hang in the air, and Taekwoon neither confirmed nor denied it. “What I don’t know is, _why_ were you following me around?” What game was Taekwoon playing, was what Hakyeon wanted to ask. Because Hakyeon had a feeling it wasn’t one that would end well for him. 

Taekwoon was silent for many moments, and Hakyeon began fiddling with his towel, scrubbing at his head with it, drying the water out of his hair. 

“I knew who you were the first moment I saw you, Hakyeon,” Taekwoon finally said softly, and hearing his name out of the vampire sent a little jolt through Hakyeon. “You were—” He fell silent, scowling a little, like he couldn’t think of the right word.

Hakyeon could finish the sentence for him. Weak, underwhelming, disappointing. Hakyeon had a big reputation, and usually he lived up to it. He was eternally flubbing up around Taekwoon though. Taekwoon hadn’t even broken a sweat taking him down, more than once, and then saving Hakyeon from those other vamps, and now— well. Hakyeon wasn’t exactly living up to his reputation anymore.

“Fierce,” Taekwoon decided on eventually, and Hakyeon looked down at him in surprise. “I could have snapped you, hurt you.” He paused. “I still could.” He looked up at Hakyeon finally, and Hakyeon looked back, frozen. “You’re afraid of me.”

Hakyeon nodded. There was no point denying it. 

“And yet you still meet my eyes, chin up, even when you’re trembling down to your bones.” Taekwoon rose to his feet, not breaking eye contact. Hakyeon had to look up at him. “Despite what you are, and what I am, I’ve found myself—” He frowned, and Hakyeon wanted to wipe it away. “Invested.” 

Hakyeon’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and Taekwoon looked away, going back to staring at the map.

“What will you do, when you find it?” Takewoon asked suddenly.

It took Hakyeon a moment before he realized Taekwoon was talking about the nest. When he spoke, his voice was somewhat strangled. “We’re always on the lookout, obviously, but, er, this,” he gestured at the notes everywhere, “is recent. I was assigned the case by my— supervisor. He wanted me to discover the nest’s location, or at least, get as near to it as possible.”

Taekwoon was glowering at the map now. “I know where the nest is.”

“You do?” Hakyeon gasped. “The exact location?”

“Mm.”

“Will you— tell me?” 

Suddenly Taekwoon was right in front of him, the motion causing Hakyeon’s hair to ruffle. “You must promise that you won’t go after the nest, that you will let others handle it.” He stared into Hakyeon’s eyes, unnervingly intense, and Hakyeon swallowed.

“I promise,” Hakyeon said readily. Those were his orders, and after the scuffle the other night, Hakyeon wasn’t exactly keen to go back.

“They are the ones who turned your friend,” Taekwoon said softly, gently, but Hakyeon still felt the words like a blow. He sucked in a breath, flinching, and Taekwoon’s hands came up to grasp his shoulders, thumbs swiping against Hakyeon’s skin gently. It was like he was afraid Hakyeon might faint.

It wasn’t a shock, exactly. To pull off what had happened, there would have needed to have been several vamps involved, and a lot of planning and organization and guts. They’d all suspected the east end nest had been behind it, but hearing the confirmation was upheaving, to say the least.

Hakyeon took several deep breaths in through his nose. “I’m alright,” he said. “I’m not going to swoon.”

Taekwoon didn’t let him go. “Promise.” He was like a dog with a bone.

Hakyeon looked him in the eyes. “I promise.”

Taekwoon stared at him a moment longer and then released him. “They’re in one of the lowermost basement levels of the textile factory on the canal.”

Hakyeon blinked. “But that factory is operating,” he said, dazed. Taekwoon’s head tilted, just a little. “Wouldn’t that be insecure?”

“It’s a large factory, and because it is still operating, it’s not somewhere people expect a nest of vampires would spend their days.” Taekwoon paused, thinking. “And they have a few daywalkers, I imagine.”

Hakyeon nodded. Most nests did, for security. Humans that had been glamoured, usually by the head of the nest, the oldest, strongest, that would do the nest’s bidding while they were tucked away for the daylight hours, sleeping. Glamours usually wore off the moment a human broke eye contact, but stronger vamps could make them last longer. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Hakyeon asked.

Taekwoon arched an eyebrow at him, and Hakyeon took a moment to be surprised at such a show of emotion. The eyebrow said, _You’re a bit slow tonight, aren’t you_. “The nest is a threat to me. They are a threat to you. I want them gone.”

Hakyeon took a moment to chew on that. There were many reasons Taekwoon could be lying, but his reasons for wanting the nest gone also seemed valid enough. Elimias and nests never got on. But vampires didn’t usually take their tips to hunters.Then again, Taekwoon had shown he wasn’t exactly what Hakyeon had come to expect from suckers. He’d find out if Taekwoon was telling the truth soon enough. 

Hakyeon went over to the corkboard, taking it down off the wall, map and pins and everything. “I need to tell this to HQ.” Dawn was a ways off, and if he got this information in immediately, they could arrange a raid by the time the sun came up. Hakyeon shot a nervous look at Taekwoon, as if he might try to stop him, but he simply watched impassively as Hakyeon scurried around his apartment, dressing quickly. “Will you, er, follow me there?” Hakyeon finally asked once he was fully dressed, save his shoes.

Taekwoon shook his head. “I cannot go near your place of work.”

That surprised Hakyeon a little. “Wow, so some spells do work on you. HQ would be so pleased to hear it.”

Taekwoon scowled. “The nest will be restless tonight. You can’t walk. Call your funny looking friend, the one with the car.”

Hakyeon took that to mean Wonshik. He was momentarily indignant that Taekwoon was suddenly bossing him around, but he knew he was right, so he simply went off to find his phone. He texted Wonshik, telling him he needed to have someone call Kris and bring him to HQ, and that in the meanwhile Wonshik needed to come pick him up. He didn’t say specifically what was up; he was, suddenly, slightly paranoid, as if the vamps might have tapped his phone. He just said it was a time sensitive issue.

When Hakyeon looked up from his phone, Taekwoon was watching him. He hadn’t put on a shirt, had simply pulled on his jeans, and it was distracting to say the least. Hakyeon still felt a little foggy. All of this was just a bit surreal. He’d had sex? With a vampire? This vampire. This vampire who was currently half naked and a little sweaty and was staring at Hakyeon like he wanted to lay Hakyeon out on the floor and do it all over again.

“Will you be here when I get back?” Hakyeon asked. He wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear. 

“Mm,” Taekwoon replied.

That made Hakyeon blush for some reason. “Thank you, for— thank you,” he mumbled. They fell back into silence and before Hakyeon could think better of it, he’d strode over to Taekwoon, placing his hands on Taekwoon’s chest lightly, and kissed him softly on the mouth. His heart began to pound the moment he got near to Taekwoon, his wards sizzling at the touch. 

Taekwoon tipped his head, deepened the kiss. 

There was a car horn honking outside. Augh, Wonshik, like an impatient parent. Didn’t even bother getting out of the car. 

Hakyeon pulled away, and Taekwoon licked his lips, the look he was giving Hakyeon so intense it felt like it could burn through him. “I’ll. Go. Now. Yes,” Hakyeon said slowly, tottering off as the car horn outside beeped more. He had to come back quickly to grab his map, but then he was scuttling out the door. 

——

The Dragon’s office somehow seemed more terrifying than usual. Maybe Kris had gotten new wards for the place. The man himself looked ready to commit homicide, standing behind his desk with dark circles smudged under his eyes, towering over Hakyeon. Somehow he made utter exhaustion look menacing, while Wonshik, standing to Hakyeon’s right, just looked like he was sleeping with his eyes open.

“Are you sure?” Kris asked, the implication being that heads would roll if he wasn’t. Hakyeon knew a lot rode on this. If he was wrong, if Taekwoon had been lying, and they arranged a raid that ended up a bust, the nest could spook and uproot themselves, moving somewhere else entirely. Then it would be back to square one.

Hakyeon took a deep breath. “Fairly sure, yes. I think the nest is hiding out in the textile factory by the canal.”

Kris’s lips pressed together in a line, and he looked down at Hakyeon’s map, which Hakyeon had plopped, corkboard and all, onto his desk. “How do you know?”

“Well,” Hakyeon said, “I used all the reports, to uh, get an idea for the activity in the area, and came up with three potential hotspots.” He motioned to the three red blotchy areas on the map. “I took a day trip, a _day trip_ —” Wonshik had groaned, “into the area. I asked around, a little, and found that the area people avoided most was the area by the canal. One of the hotspots,” he pointed at the spot in question, “overlaps the canal, and that was the one I was most suspicious of anyway. It has a lot of activity, but if you look, there’s a weird dead zone in the center. Nothing open after dark, no missing persons reported, no sightings. Just nothing. Until, yesterday night.” Hakyeon poked at a little red pin. “That’s where the six dead vamps were found. And right in the middle of this deadzone, is the factory.”

“There’s multiple factories in this deadzone,” Kris said flatly. 

Wonshik shifted, like he’d been woken up. “While we were waiting for you to arrive, sir,” he said, stepping forward, “we went into the database and found several people from the textile factory have gone missing, while none of the others in the area have had this issue.” He handed Kris five folders, which he flipped through.

“Why did these not show up in our records?” Kris asked, like this omission of information was personally offensive.

“Because they didn’t go missing after dark,” Hakyeon explained. “They went missing during the day, were at work one minute then gone the next. We only keep track of people who vanish at night.”

“You think the nest has daywalkers that lure people beneath ground during the day,” Kris said, and Hakyeon nodded. Kris pursed his lips. “This is good work,” he said grudgingly, putting the folders down. “And you really believe the nest is there? If you’re wrong it comes down on all of us.”

Hakyeon puffed his chest out. “Yes.”

Kris sighed, running a hand over his own face, and then reached for his phone.

——

Hakyeon was sitting behind a desk in one of the large rooms of HQ. They didn’t have cubicles here, desks and tables and chairs shoved into rooms in disorganized lines. 

People were rushing around him, making calls, flinging files at one another. The raid would be officially arranged by VCF, but they were still working hard on the mysterious case about the six dead vamps, and the news of the raid had given everyone new fervor in case anything important lay hidden in the case. 

Hakyeon checked his watch. Six A.M. The sun would be peeking over the horizon by now. He wondered what Taekwoon had done, if he’d waited for Hakyeon to return, and then been forced to flee home before the sun came up. The thought made him feel sad, somehow.

A pile of folders suddenly fell onto Hakyeon’s desk with a bang that made him jump. Wonshik was standing over him. “I wanted you to take a look at these.”

Hakyeon gaped. “I uncovered a vamp nest,” he said indignantly. “I have done enough.”

“It’s the case with the six dead vamps,” Wonshik said, and Hakyeon’s stomach twisted. “I don’t expect you to make any more miracle conclusions, I just want fresh eyes.”

Hakyeon nearly laughed. Nearly.

He went through the files. It was mildly stressful, having to pretend to be surprised or baffled. He was never the best actor when it came to stuff like this. But he took his time, reading through slowly. That part wasn’t hard. He was so tired that many times he had to read a line multiple times to absorb it. There was no mention of a dagger being found at the scene, though they had managed to piece together that there had been two different blades used, and most likely two different individuals. Hakyeon knew how strange it all must seem from someone with an outside perspective.

Sanghyuk came by, and Hakyeon peered at him blearily. He looked far too excited. And awake. 

“What time is it?” Hakyeon grumbled.

“Almost ten,” Sanghyuk replied, radiating young energy. Hakyeon blinked slowly. He’d been sitting here, perusing these files for almost four hours. No wonder his butt was numb. 

He stood. “I think I need coffee.”

“You definitely look tired, old man,” Sanghyun said with a grin. 

“I can still hand your ass back to you on a platter if you don’t watch it,” Hakyeon snapped. Suddenly there was a hush in the room, everyone pausing, conversations dying. Hakyeon wondered if he’d said something wrong, but then Wonshik was beside him.

“The raid’s a go,” he whispered into Hakyeon’s ear, and Hakyeon’s stomach sank somewhere around his knees. The moment of truth. 

Someone turned the television in the corner of the room on to the local news station, while another person brought in a radio tuned into the VCF frequency. There was an occasional quip from the radio, heavy with static, but the woman with the oversized microphone of the television spoke more, about how VCF had amassed a very large amount of officers to perform what appeared to be a raid. She spoke more about how the area had been evacuated, interviewed a few people, tried to direct the camera closer but was rebuffed. The whole area had been cordoned off.

Hakyeon found it was all washing over him, a buzzing in his ears. Maybe it was because of how tired he was, or because so much had happened so fast. The people around him had all dropped what they were doing to watch the raid go down, and apart from the few occasional whispers, they were all silent, waiting.

Taekwoon— he hadn’t been lying. They didn’t get to hear much, just the command to go in barked over the radio, then after that a “we’re in” and “we’re on the first basement level” and then “proceeding to lower level” then a lot of silence from the radio, while the woman on the television filled the time by rattling off the statistics of the area and other inane facts. She stopped when the explosions began. 

The recoil from one vamp dying was bad. But when it was a whole nest, and especially if it was an older vamp, the centuries old ones that ran nests like this, well. Sometimes it could be really bad.

This one was really bad.

Hakyeon found he was numb, his brain trying to take him in too many directions at once so he just shut down. Taekwoon had told him the truth. They’d just busted one of the largest nests on the western coast because of information a vampire had willingly given him. After he’d had sex with said vampire. 

The VCF officers were retreating from the building as many parts had grown unstable and were collapsing. There’d been several casualties, they said, but they had two vamps in custody, silvered and in tarp baggies. And the leader of the nest was dead. Hakyeon looked at the clock on the wall. An hour had passed.

Hakyeon was sharply aware of everything wrong with this picture as his fellow hunters began to congratulate him. Sanghyuk was beaming, slapping his arms excitedly, and Wonshik patted him. Someone else ruffled his hair. People just kept repeating what a good job he’d done, kept patting him and smiling and whooping. Yes. Cha Hakyeon. Excellent vampire hunter. 

A few hours ago he’d been underneath a vamp, bucking into its touch, gasping against its lips.

Hakyeon shuddered. He didn’t know what to feel. He didn’t know what he was _doing_.

Something must have showed on his face, because Wonshik wrapped an arm around him. “Hey,” he said, face etched with concern, “you okay?”

Hakyeon looked at his him, at this face he knew so well, and for one wild moment, thought about telling him everything. He was feeling so close to snapping, so hysterical, that the idea almost seemed funny. This was all so fucking _wrong_. 

“Yeah,” Hakyeon said, voice cracking a little. “I’m just a bit dazed I guess. It’s a lot to process.”

Wonshik made a face, and Hakyeon supposed it was supposed to convey commiseration. As if he understood. “Yeah, I know. You need anything? Want me to take you home? I don’t think anyone will mind, pretty sure the rest of the day is gonna be a lot of obnoxious celebrating.”

Hakyeon’s panic receded, just a little, under a rush of fondness for Wonshik. “No,” Hakyeon said softly, “thank you. You, er, celebrate. I’m going to go down to the bunks and nap. Keep an eye on Sanghyuk.” Wonshik nodded readily enough, but Hakyeon felt his gaze heavy on his back as he walked away.

HQ was outfitted in such a way that one could potentially live there if one wanted. There was a fairly large room with two rows of small beds, and at the end of the room was a doorway that led into a bathroom which had several toilets and sinks as well as showers. 

The door to the room slammed shut behind Hakyeon. It was empty, but not completely silent, the noise from the celebration filtering in somewhat, even here. He flopped on a bed. Spring mattress, pretty uncomfortable, but the sheets were clean and Hakyeon was tired down to his bones. Laying down felt like bliss.

He tried to piece through his thoughts, tried to stop them racing through his mind in a panicked blur long enough for him to try and come to a rational decision about everything.

He was a hunter. This he knew. He’d made love with a vampire. This he also knew. But he didn’t know how to fix this, how to reconcile these two things. 

He shut his eyes. _They couldn’t be reconciled_. They couldn’t. Hakyeon could not fix this. Nothing could fix this. Nothing could undo it. 

He breathed deeply, and let that truth sink him. It was oddly calming. There was nothing to be done for the things that had happened. He was a hunter. He was going to continue being a hunter. He’d made love with a vampire. And he was probably going to do so again, if he was being really honest with himself. The events didn’t mesh, but Hakyeon could keep them separate, boxing them into different parts of himself. 

He couldn’t stop being a hunter, wouldn’t stop. But he could make an exception, for Taekwoon.

——

Hakyeon woke hours later to a rather sore back and a strangely clear head. It was quieter now, but there were still loud voices floating through the door, so maybe he hadn’t been out for too long. 

He got up slowly, muscles protesting. He was halfway to the door when he decided that he wanted to use the shower, so he did. There was no bubblegum scented soap here, just little individually wrapped soap bars in a cabinet, like the kind he’d seen in hotels. Maybe these actually had been snagged from a hotel. 

His muscles were a little looser when he stepped out, even if he paid the price of smelling like someone else. And the towel was itchy, but it had been repeatedly bleached within an inch of its life, so Hakyeon wasn’t going to whine too much. He searched through the cabinet and found a sealed toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste that had been mostly emptied but upon much vigorous squeezing, yielded enough toothpaste for a brushing.

The only downside was he had to get back into his dirty clothes, but they didn’t smell dirty, and his other choice was to use one of the uniforms stashed away. They were khaki and gross and probably smelled stale because no one ever wore them. 

When he stepped out into the brightly lit hallway he felt like himself, felt normal. 

Everyone was still gathered in the office room, all packed together, drinking. There were a lot of empty beer bottles around, and Hakyeon could see they’d broken out the vodka as well. It made him smile, a little. Hunters were rarely so happy.

Sanghyuk was the first to see him, and he bounded over, slinging an arm around Hakyeon’s shoulders. Hakyeon eyed the beer in his hand and too late Sanghyuk looked sheepish.

“I said to watch him, not feed him alcohol,” Hakyeon said to Wonshik a few minutes later.

“Let him be a dumb teenager just this once, mother hen,” Wonshik said, pouring Hakyeon a shot of vodka. “We did good today.”

Hakyeon took the shot glass carefully. They raised a toast to him, and Hakyeon allowed himself to be happy. The nest in the east end was gone. _Gone_. 

“To Hakyeon,” Wonshik said, beaming with pride, “for knowing the enemy.”

Hakyeon almost choked on his drink.

——

Wonshik drove Hakyeon home. It wasn’t that late out really, a little after seven in the evening, but since it was approaching winter it was already fully dark, the street lamps all on, glaringly bright. It might have been Hakyeon’s imagination, but it seemed like there were more people still on the streets than usual.

Wonshik zoomed up to Hakyeon’s curve, smiling. He seemed happier than Hakyeon had seen him in a long time, and something about it hurt Hakyeon, just a little. Wonshik deserved to be happy. 

Wonshik put the car in park and turned his smile on Hakyeon, and then his expression froze. “Oh no,” he groaned.

“Yep,” Hakyeon said, undoing his seat belt and leaning over the gearstick to give Wonshik a hug. He deliberately smooshed Wonshik’s face into his shoulder so he couldn’t complain (though he still tried. Hakyeon ignored him). “I love you,” Hakyeon said honestly. “You’re a good friend.”

“You smell like cheap hotel soap,” Wonshik griped, turning his face away from Hakyeon so he could speak. “Get off me.”

“Do you love me?” Hakyeon asked, still clutching onto his friend.

Wonshik squirmed. “No.”

“Yes,” Hakyeon hissed into his ear, turning his face so he could blow a raspberry into Wonshik’s cheek. Wonshik screamed like a little girl. It was very satisfying.

“Do you sense a vamp nearby?” Wonshik asked after Hakyeon had relinquished his death grip on him. He was wiping at his cheek.

Hakyeon paused, heart stuttering, because yes, yes he did. “No,” he said.

Wonshik made a face at his slobbery hand before wiping it on Hakyeon’s shirt. “Ah, well, maybe it’s the—” he made a vague motion with his hand, “everything.”

“Yeah,” Hakyeon agreed, nodding maybe a little too vigorously. 

“Night, dude,” Wonshik said, grinning easily, and Hakyeon hugged him once more before he got out of the car.

The feeling of _vampire_ got stronger the nearer Hakyeon got to his apartment, slapping him in the face once he actually stepped inside. His heart was pounding. He toed his shoes off, going through the kitchen and into the living room.

Taekwoon was curled up on his couch, reading a book. Hakyeon’s book, he realized. His outfit wasn’t the same as before, and he was fully clothed, except for his bare feet poking out of the ends of his jeans. So he must have gone back to his hidey place. Wherever that was.

Taekwoon looked up as Hakyeon walked in, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t smile. Hakyeon was, somehow, happy to see him in a perverse way. Taekwoon looked so grumpy, but Hakyeon was beginning to realize that was just sort of the way his face was. Hakyeon didn’t know what it meant that he was starting to be able to read Taekwoon’s nuances. He was so emotionally drained, he couldn't think about any of this tonight.

He padded over to the sofa, climbing into Taekwoon’s lap, legs bracketing Taekwoon’s waist. The book slipped out of Taekwoon’s hands as he reached up to grasp Hakyeon’s hips, the soft paperback falling onto the floor with a gentle thud. Hakyeon put his hands on Taekwoon’s shoulders, revelling in his warmth, and then kissed him. Taekwoon let him, sighing into Hakyeon’s mouth.

When they parted Hakyeon said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.” Taekwoon didn’t reply, just blinked up at him slowly. “You were right, you know. About the nest. It’s gone.” Hakyeon’s heart had kicked it up another notch, because thinking about Taekwoon telling him the truth about this brought everything Hakyeon was still unsure about back to the fore. Hakyeon could deal with his own actions, his own motives, but he couldn’t figure Taekwoon’s out. He didn’t understand why Taekwoon kissed him instead of killing him, and he didn’t know how to deal with the unknown like this. He just felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Do you want to bite me?” Hakyeon asked suddenly. Taekwoon went still, that nerve jangling stillness. Hakyeon’s breathing sped up, his fingers tapping against Taekwoon’s unmoving shoulders. Hakyeon’s wards were humming, sparking, like they understood the conversation. “Well?” 

Taekwoon nodded slowly.

Hakyeon wasn’t sure if he’d meant the question hypothetically or not, wasn’t sure if he’d asked out of curiosity or had been offering. And he wasn't sure how Taekwoon had taken it either. But regardless he was undoing the zipper of his jacket with fumbling fingers, shrugging it off. It was like he was trying to prove something, but what and to whom, he didn’t know. After a second of hesitation he pulled his shirt up and off as well, and then he was half naked in Taekwoon’s lap, shivering. 

Taekwoon watched the process, eyes dark and intent. His brow had hitched just a little, and he gently stroked his hands down Hakyeon’s bare back, humming soothingly, as Hakyeon began to tremble in earnest.

"Will it hurt?" Hakeyon asked softly, not wanting to sound afraid. The pain wasn't really anything to fear, it was the potential for death he should be frightened of, yet here he was.

"Mm," Taekwoon murmured, a soft sound of assent. He blinked up at Hakyeon, eyes unwavering, as he waited.

Hakyeon could feel his own pulse, the blood rushing in his ears. Taekwoon didn't say anything more, quiet even now, and Hakyeon couldn't decide if he appreciated it or not. He swallowed thickly, gaze dropping from Taekwoon's eyes to fixate on the collar of his shirt. "Do it," he said, biting it out before he could change his mind.

He was expecting— something, some sort of roughness, Taekwoon to finally turn on him, to grab Hakyeon’s hair and bare his neck and bite down, but instead Taekwoon pulled him closer slowly, so their chests brushed, gentle even now. Hakyeon was shaking so badly that he'd be mortified if he wasn't so frightened.

Sometimes Hakyeon wondered if Taekwoon had glamoured him, and he just hadn’t noticed. Taekwoon was so different, everything about him quiet and subtle. Maybe his glamour worked the same way the rest of him did, not a sudden rush of madness but something slow and poisonous that seeped through Hakyeon's cracks and settled into his bones until he didn't even notice that he wasn't acting out of his own will anymore.

Taekwoon cut off that line of thought by kissing him, and Hakyeon gasped, biting back a sob. His hands fisted in Taekwoon's shirt. Hakyeon had been fighting for so long, had molded his body into a precise weapon, was the best hunter in the northern hemisphere, but he didn't feel like any of that anymore, not when Taekwoon touched him. He just felt small and fragile and so temporary, like the small flickering flame of a candle. It would be so easy for Taekwoon to snuff him out. And Hakyeon had just given him permission to do just that, and he was trusting him not to. Trusting a vampire.

Hakyeon laughed, a short burst of sound as he broke the kiss. "I've fucked up so badly," he said, turning his face up to stare at the ceiling. Then he tipped his head a bit more, giving Taekwoon perfect access, and Taekwoon finally leaned down, nosing down along Hakyeon's jaw to his neck like he had done so many times before.

He didn't say anything, didn't give Hakyeon any warning aside from the swift kiss he placed on Hakyeon's pulse point before he bit down. It happened so quickly, and it _hurt_ , a short, sharp little pain, and Hakyeon let out a surprised noise as he exhaled, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him.

Taekwoon pulled back a little, no longer biting down, and Hakyeon felt a thick line of blood drip down, over his collarbone. Then Taekwoon's mouth was back over the wounds, and he was holding Hakyeon to him a bit tighter as he sucked lightly. It all felt so much gentler and more languid than Hakyeon had anticipated, no rough urgency. Hakyeon tentatively brought his hands up, sliding them into Taekwoon's hair so he could cradle his head gently as he fed. He could hear Taekwoon swallowing.

Hakyeon counted his own heartbeats, eyes closed. He felt tingly, lazy, more and more boneless and warm every time Taekwoon drew another mouthful. It was wrong, it was sick, this was all so backwards and he'd crossed every line imaginable. It wasn’t fair that it should feel as sweet and intimate as it did.

It took Hakyeon several seconds before he realized Taekwoon had pulled away, no longer sucking. He blinked his eyes open. "That's it?" he asked, dazed.

"That's it." Taekwoon replied softly. He was still nuzzling into the side of Hakyeon's neck, licking at the wounds he'd made, cleaning around them. He ducked down to lap up the trail that had dripped down Hakyeon's chest.

After a moment of thought Hakyeon absently began petting Taekwoon's hair. "Do I taste good?" he mumbled.

"Mm," Taekwoon said in assent. He came back up and pressed his mouth to Hakyeon's, and Hakyeon licked his own blood off Taekwoon's lips.

He'd fucked up _so_ badly.


End file.
